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MEN, WOMEN 

AND 

GHOSTS 



Books by Amy Lowell 

PUBLISHED BY 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

Poetry 

LEGENDS 

PICTURES OF THE FLOATING WORLD 

CAN Grande's castle 

MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 
SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED 
A DOME OF MANY-COLOURED GLASS 

(in collaboration with FLORENCE ATSCOUGH) 
FIR-FLOWER TABLETS: POEMS TRANSLATED 

FROM THE CHINESE 



Prose 



TENDENCIES IN MODERN AMERICAN POETRY 
SIX FRENCH poets: STUDIES IN CONTEMPO- 
RARY LITERATURE 



MEN, WOMEN 

AND 

GHOSTS 

BY 

AMY LOWELL 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY AM-S LOWELL 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

PUBLISHED OCTOBER, I916 

REPRINTED NOVEMBER, I916; FEBRUARY, ipi?: 
MAY, DECEMBER, I919; MARCH, I922 






" *. . . See small portions of the Eternal World that ever 
groweth' : 

So sang a Fairy, mocking, as he sat on a streaTed tulip. 

Thinking none saw him : when he ceas'd I started from the 
trees. 

And caught him in my hat, as boys knock down a butterfly '*j 
Waiiam Blake. " Europe. A Prophecy." 

Thou hast a lap full of seed. 
And this is a fine country. 

William Blake. 



PREFACE 

This is a book of stories. For that reason I 
have excluded all purely lyrical poems. But 
the word "stories" has been stretched to its 
fullest application. It includes both narrative 
poems, properly so called; tales divided into 
scenes; and a few pieces of less obvious story- 
telling import in which one might say that the 
dramatis personcB are air, clouds, trees, houses, 
streets, and such like things. 

It has long been a favourite idea of mine that 
the rhythms of vers libre have not been suffi- 
ciently plumbed, that there is in them a power of 
variation which has never yet been brought to 
the light of experiment. I think it was the 
piano pieces of Debussy, with their strange like- 
ness to short vers libre poems, which first showed 
me the close kinship of music and poetry, and 



VUl PREFACE 

there flashed into my mind the idea of using the 
movement of poetry in somewhat the same way 
that the musician uses the movement of music. 

It was quite evident that this could never be 
done in the strict pattern of a metrical form, but 
the flowing, fluctuating rhythm of vers libre 
seemed to open the door to such an experiment. 
First, however, I considered the same method 
as applied to the more pronounced movements of 
natural objects. If the reader will turn to the 
poem, "A Roxbury Garden," he will find in the 
first two sections an attempt to give the circular 
movement of a hoop bowling along the ground, 
and the up and down, elliptical curve of a flying 
shuttlecock. 

From these experiments, it is but a step to the 
flowing rhythm of music. In "The Cremona 
Violin," I have tried to give this flowing, chang- 
ing rhythm to the parts in which the violin is 
being played. The effect is farther heightened, 
because the rest of the poem is written in the 



PREFACE IX 

seven line Chaucerian stanza ; and, by deserting 
this ordered pattern for the undulating line of 
vers librey I hoped to produce something of the 
suave, continuous tone of a violin. Again, 
in the violin parts themselves, the movement 
constantly changes, as will be quite plain to 
any one reading these passages aloud. 

In "The Cremona Violin," however, the 
rhythms are fairly obvious and regular. I set 
myself a far harder task in trying to tran- 
scribe the various movements of Stravinsky's 
"Three Pieces * Grotesques,' for String Quartet." 
Several musicians, who have seen the poem, 
think the movement accurately given. 

These experiments lead me to believe that 
there is here much food for thought and matter 
for study, and I hope many poets will follow 
me in opening up the still hardly explored 
possibilities of vers libre. 

A good many of the poems in this book are 
written in "polyphonic prose." A form about 



PREFACE 



which I have written and spoken so much that 
it seems hardly necessary to explain it here. 
Let me hastily add, however, that the word 
"prose" in its name refers only to the typo- 
graphical arrangement, for in no sense is this a 
prose form. Only read it aloud, Gentle Reader, 
I beg, and you will see what you will see. For 
a purely dramatic form, I know none better in 
the whole range of poetry. It enables the poet 
to give his characters the vivid, real effect they 
have in a play, while at the same time writing 
in the decor. 

One last innovation I have still to mention. 
It will be found in "Spring Day," and more 
fully enlarged upon in the series, "Towns in 
Colour." In these poems, I have endeavoured to 
give the colour, and light, and shade, of certain 
places and hours, stressing the purely pictorial 
effect, and with little or no reference to any 
other aspect of the places described. It is an 
enchanting thing to wander through a city 



PREFACE XI 

looking for its unrelated beauty, the beauty by 
which it captivates the sensuous sense of seeing. 

I have always loved aquariums, but for years 
I went to them and looked, and looked, at those 
swirling, shooting, looping patterns of fish, 
which always defied transcription to paper until 
I hit upon the "unrelated " method. The result 
is in *'An Aquarium." I think the first thing 
which turned me in this direction was John 
Gould Fletcher's "London Excursion," in "Some 
Imagist Poets." I here record my thanks. 

For the substance of the poems — why, the 
poems are here. No one writing to-day can 
fail to be affected by the great war raging in 
Europe at this time. We are too near it to do 
more than touch upon it. But, obliquely, it 
is suggested in many of these poems, most 
notably those in the section, "Bronze Tablets." 
The Napoleonic Era is an epic subject, and 
waits a great epic poet. I have only been able 
to open a few windows upon it here and there. 



Xll PREFACE 

But the scene from the windows is authentic, 
and the watcher has used eyes, and ears, and 
heart, in watching. 

Amy Lowell 
July 10, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

FIGURINES IN OLD SAXE 

Patterns 3 

PicKTHORN Manor 10 

The Cremona Violin 55 

The Cross-Roads 113 

A RoxBURY Garden 122 

1777 145 

BRONZE TABLETS 

The Fruit Shop 159 

Malmaison 168 

The Hammers 184 

Two Travellers in the Place Vendome . . 218 

WAR PICTURES 

The Allies 225 

The Bombardment 228 



XIV CONTENTS 

Lead Soldiers 234 

The Painter on Silk 243 

A Ballad of Footmen 245 



THE OVERGROWN PASTURE 

Reaping 253 

Off the Turnpike 260 

The Grocery 275 

Number 3 on the Docket 286 

CLOCKS TICK A CENTURY 

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening . 301 

The Paper Windmill 311 

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand . . ■> . 318 

Spring Day . . . . . . . .330 

The Dinner-Party 338 

Stravinsky's Three Pieces "Grotesques," for 

String Quartet ...... 342 



CONTENTS XV 

Towns in Colour: 

Red Slippers 348 

Thompson's Lunch Room — Grand Central 

Station 351 

An Opera House 354 

Afternoon Rain in State Street . . . 357 

An Aquarium 360 

Thanks are due to the editors of The, Century, Scribner^s, The Yale 
Bevieao, The N&w Republic, Poei/ry, The Poetry Bem&ic, The Poetry 
Journal, The Independent, Beedy'^s Mirror, The Masses, The Little 
Beview, The Boston Transcript, and The Egoist, London, for their 
courteous permission to reprint certain of these poems which have been 
copyrighted by them. 

The two sea songs quoted in "The Hammers" are taken from 
Songs : Naval and Nautical, of the late Charles Dibdin, London, 
John Murray, 1841. The " Hanging Johnny " refrain, in " The Cremona 
Violin," is borrowed from the old, well-known chanty of that name. 



FIGURINES IN OLD SAXE 



PATTERNS 

I WALK down the garden paths. 

And all the daffodils 

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. 

I walk down the patterned garden-paths 

In my stiff, brocaded gown. 

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, 

I too am a rare 

Pattern. As I wander down 

The garden paths. 

My dress is richly figured. 
And the train 

Makes a pink and silver stain 
On the gravel, and the thrift/ 
Of the borders. 



4 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Just a plate of current fashion. 

Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. 

Not a softness anywhere about me. 

Only whalebone and brocade. 

And I sink on a seat in the shade 

Of a lime tree. For my passion 

Wars against the stiff brocade. 

The daffodils and squills 

Flutter in the breeze 

As they please. 

And I weep ; 

For the lime-tree is in blossom 

And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom. 

And the plashing of waterdrops 
In the marble fountain 
Comes down the garden-paths. 
The dripping never stops. 
Underneath my stiffened gown 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 5 

Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, 

A basin in the midst of hedges grown 

So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding. 

But she guesses he is near. 

And the sliding of the water 

Seems the stroking of a dear 

Hand upon her. 

What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown ! 

I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground. 

All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground. 

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths. 

And he would stumble after. 

Bewildered by my laughter. 

I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt 

and the buckles on his shoes. 
I would choose 

To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, 
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover. 



6 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Till he caught me in the shade. 

And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body 

as he clasped me. 
Aching, melting, unafraid. 

With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops, 
And the plopping of the waterdrops, 
All about us in the open afternoon — 
I am very like to swoon 
With the weight of this brocade. 
For the sun sifts through the shade. 

Underneath the fallen blossom 

In my bosom. 

Is a letter I have hid. 

It was brought to me this morning by a rider from 

the Duke. 
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell 
Died in action Thursday se'nnight." 
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 7 

The letters squirmed like snakes. 

"Any answer, Madam," said my footman. 

"No," I told him. 

r 

"See that the messenger takes some refreshment. 

No, no answer." 

And I walked into the garden. 

Up and down the patterned paths. 

In my stiflF, correct brocade. 

The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the 

sun. 

Each one. 

I stood upright too. 

Held rigid to the pattern 

By the stiffness of my gown. 

Up and down I walked. 

Up and down. 

In a month he would have been my husband. 
In a month, here, underneath this lime. 



8 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

We would have broke the pattern ; 

He for me, and I for him. 

He as Colonel, I as Lady, 

On this shady seat. 

He had a whim 

That sunlight carried blessing. 

And I answered, **It shall be as you have said." 

Now he is dead. 

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk 

Up and down 

The patterned garden-paths 

In my stiflF, brocaded gown. 

The squills and dafiPodils 

Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and 

to snow. 
I shall go 
Up and down. 
In my gown. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 9 

Gorgeously arrayed. 

Boned and stayed. 

And the softness of my body will be guarded from 

embrace 
By each button, hook, and lace. 
For the man who should loose me is dead. 
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, 
In a pattern called a war. 
Christ ! What are patterns for ? 



10 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



PICKTHORN MANOR 

I 

How fresh the Dartle*s little waves that day ! 

A steely silver, imderliaed with blue. 
And flashing where the round clouds, blown away. 

Let drop the yellow sunshine to gleam through 
And tip the edges of the waves with shifts 
And spots of whitest fire, hard like gems 

Cut from the midnight moon they were, and 
sharp 
As wind through leafless stems. 
The Lady Eunice walked between the drifts 
Of blooming cherry-trees, and watched the rifts 

Of clouds drawn through the river's azure warp. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 11 

II 

Her little feet tapped softly down the path. 

Her soul was listless ; even the morning breeze 
Fluttering the trees and strewing a light swath 

Of fallen petals on the grass, could please 
Her not at all. She brushed a hair aside 

With a swift move, and a half -angry frown. 
She stopped to pull a daffodil or two. 

And held them to her gown 
To test the colours ; put them at her side, 
Then at her breast, then loosened them and tried 
Some new arrangement, but it would not do. 

Ill 
A lady in a Manor-house, alone. 

Whose husband is in Flanders with the Duke 
Of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, she's grown 

Too apathetic even to rebuke 



12 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Her idleness. What is she on this Earth ? 
No woman surely, since she neither can 

Be wed nor single, must not let her mind 
Build thoughts upon a man 
Except for hers. Indeed that were no dearth 
Were her Lord here, for well she knew his worth, 

And when she thought of him her eyes were kind. 

IV 

Too lately wed to have forgot the wooing. 

Too unaccustomed as a bride to feel 
Other than strange delight at her wife's doing. 

Even at the thought a gentle blush would steal 
Over her face, and then her lips would frame 
Some little word of loving, and her eyes 
Would brim and spill their tears, when all they 
saw 
Was the bright sun, slantwise 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 13 

Through burgeoning trees, and all the morning's 

flame 
Burning and quivering round her. With quick shame 
She shut her heart and bent before the law. 

V 

He was a soldier, she was proud of that. 

This was his house and she would keep it well. 
His honour was in fighting, hers in what 

He'd left her here in charge of. Then a spell 
Of conscience sent her through the orchard spying 

Upon the gardeners. Were their tools about ? 
Were any branches broken ? Had the weeds 

Been duly taken out 
Under the 'spaliered pears, and were these lying 
Nailed snug against the sunny bricks and drying 
Their leaves and satisfying all their needs ? 



14 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

VI 

She picked a stone up with a little pout. 

Stones looked so ill in well-kept flower-borders. 
Where should she put it ? All the paths about 

Were strewn with fair, red gravel by her orders. 
No stone could mar their sifted smoothness. So 

She hurried to the river. At the edge 

She stood a moment charmed by the swift blue 

Beyond the river sedge. 
She watched it curdling, crinkling, and the snow 
Purfled upon its wave-tops. Then, "Hullo, 

My Beauty, gently, or you'll wriggle through.'* 

VII 

The Lady Eunice caught a willow spray 

To save herself from tumbling in the shallows 
Which rippled to her feet. Then straight away 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS. 15 

She peered down stream among the budding 
sallows. 
A youth in leather breeches and a shirt 
Of finest broidered lawn lay out upon 

An overhanging bole and deftly swayed 
A well-hooked fish which shone 
In the pale lemon sunshine like a spurt 
Of silver, bowed and damascened, and girt 

With crimson spots and moons which waned and 
played. 

VIII 

The fish hung circled for a moment, ringed 
And bright ; then flung itself out, a thin blade 

Of spotted lightning, and its tail was winged 

With chipped and sparkled sunshine. And the 
shade 

Broke up and splintered into shafts of light 
Wheeling about the fish, who churned the air 



16 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And made the fish-line hum, and bent the rod 
Almost to snapping. Care 
The young man took against the twigs, with slight. 
Deft movements he kept fish and line in tight 
Obedience to his will with every prod. 

IX 

He lay there, and the fish hung just beyond. 

He seemed uncertain what more he should do. 
He drew back, pulled the rod to correspond. 

Tossed it and caught it ; every time he threw. 
He caught it nearer to the point. At last 
The fish was near enough to touch. He paused. 
Eunice knew well the craft — "What's got the 
thing!" 
She cried. " What can have caused — 
Where is his net ? The moment will be past. 
The fish will wriggle free." She stopped aghast. 
He turned and bowed. One arm was in a sling. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 17 

X 

The broad, black ribbon she had thought his basket 

Must hang from, held instead a useless arm. 
"I do not wonder, Madam, that you ask it." 

He smiled, for she had spoke aloud. **The charm 
Of trout fishing is in my eyes enhanced 
When you must play your fish on land as well." 
"How will you take him ? " Eunice asked. **In 
truth 
I really cannot tell. 
'Twas stupid of me, but it simply chanced 
I never though of that until he glanced 

Into the branches. 'Tis a bit uncouth." 

XI 

He watched the fish against the blowing sky. 
Writhing and glittering, pulling at the line. 
"The hook is fast, I might just let him die," 



18 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

He mused. "But that would jar against your fine 
Sense of true sportsmanship, I know it would,'* 
Cried Eunice. "Let me do it.'* Swift and light 

She ran towards him. "It is so long now 
Since I have felt a bite, 
I lost all heart for everything.'* She stood. 
Supple and strong, beside him, and her blood 
Tingled her lissom body to a glow. 

XII 

She quickly seized the fish and with a stone 

Ended its flurry, then removed the hook. 
Untied the fly with well-poised fingers. Done, 

She asked him where he kept his fishing-book. 
He pointed to a coat flung on the ground. 

She searched the pockets, found a shagreen case, 
Replaced the fly, noticed a golden stamp 

Filling the middle space. 
Two letters half rubbed out were there, and round 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 19 

About them gay rococo flowers wound 

And tossed a spray of roses to the clamp. 

XIII 

The Lady Eunice puzzled over these. 

"G. D." the young man gravely said. "My name 
Is Gervase Deane. Your servant, if you please." 

"Oh, Sir, indeed I know you, for your fame 
For exploits in the field has reached my ears. 

I did not know you wounded and returned." 
"But just come back. Madam. A silly prick 

To gain me such unearned 
Holiday making. And you, it appears. 
Must be Sir Everard's lady. And my fears 
At being caught a-trespassing were quick." 

XIV 

He looked so rueful that she laughed out loud. 
"You are forgiven, Mr. Deane. Even more, 
I offer you the fishing, and am proud 



20 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

That you should find it pleasant from this shore. 
Nobody fishes now, my husband used 
To angle daily, and I too with him. 

He loved the spotted trout, and pike, and dace. 
He even had a whim 
That flies my fingers tied swiftly confused 
The greater fish. And he must be excused, 

Love weaves odd fancies in a lonely place.'* 

XV 

She sighed because it seemed so long ago. 

Those days with Everard ; unthinking took 
The path back to the orchard. Strolling so 

She walked, and he beside her. In a nook 
Where a stone seat withdrew beneath low boughs, 
Full-blossomed, hummed with bees, they sat them 
down. 
She questioned him about the war, the share 
Her husband had, and grown 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 21 

Eager by his clear answers, straight allows 
Her hidden hopes and fears to speak, and rouse 

Her numbed love, which had slumbered un- 
aware. 

XVI 

Under the orchard trees daffodils danced 

And jostled, turning sideways to the wind. 
A dropping cherry petal softly glanced 
Over her hair, and slid away behind. 
At the far end through twisted cherry-trees 

The old house glowed, geranium-hued, with bricks 

Bloomed in the sun like roses, low and long. 
Gabled, and with quaint tricks 
Of chimneys carved and fretted. Out of these 
Grey smoke was shaken, which the faint Spring 
breeze 
Tossed into nothing. Then a thrush's song 



22 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

XVII 

Needled its way through sound of bees and river. 
The notes fell, round and starred, between young 
leaves. 
Trilled to a spiral lilt, stopped on a quiver. 

The Lady Eunice listens and believes. 
Gervase has many tales of her dear Lord, 
His bravery, his knowledge, his charmed life. 

She quite forgets who's speaking in the gladness 
Of being this man's wife. 
Gervase is wounded, grave indeed, the word 
Is kindly said, but to a softer chord 

She strings her voice to ask with wistful sadness, 

XVIII 
"And is Sir Everard still unscathed ? I fain 

Would know the truth." "Quite well, dear Lady, 
quite.'* 
She smiled in her content. "So many slain. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 23 

You must forgive me for a little fright." 
And he forgave her, not alone for that. 
But because she was fingering his heart. 

Pressing and squeezing it, and thinking so 
Only to ease her smart 
Of painful, apprehensive longing. At 
Their feet the river swirled and chucked. They sat 
An hour there. The thrush flew to and fro. 

XIX 

The Lady Eunice supped alone that day. 

As always since Sir Everard had gone. 
In the oak-panelled parlour, whose array 

Of faded portraits in carved mouldings shone. 
Warriors and ladies, armoured, ruffed, peruked. 

Van Dykes with long, shm fingers ; Holbeins, stout 
And heavy-featured ; and one Rubens dame, 

A peony just burst out. 
With flaunting, crimson flesh. Eunice rebuked 



24 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Her thoughts of gentler blood, when these had duked 
It with the best, and scorned to change their 
name. 

XX 

A sturdy family, and old besides. 

Much older than her own, the Earls of Crowe. 
Since Saxon days, these men had sought their brides 

Among the highest born, but always so. 
Taking them to themselves, their wealth, their lands. 
But never their titles. Stem perhaps, but strong. 
The Framptons fed their blood from richest 
streams. 
Scorning the common throng. 
Gazing upon these men, she understands 
The toughness of the web wrought from such strands, 
And pride of Everard colours all her dreams. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 25 

XXI 

Eunice forgets to eat, watching their faces 

Flickering in the wind-blown candle's shine. 
Blue-coated lackeys tiptoe to their places. 

And set out plates of fruit and jugs of wine. 
The table glitters black like Winter ice. 

The Dartle's rushing, and the gentle clash 
Of blossomed branches, drifts into her ears. 

And through the casement sash 
She sees each cherry stem a pointed slice 
Of splintered moonlight, topped with all the spice 
And shimmer of the blossoms it uprears. 

XXII 

"In such a night — " she laid the book aside. 
She could outnight the poet by thinking back. 

In such a night she came here as a bride. 
The date was graven in the almanack 



26 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Of her clasped memory. In this very room 
Had Everard uncloaked her. On this seat 

Had drawn her to him, bade her note the trees. 
How white they were and sweet 
And later, coming to her, her dear groom. 
Her Lord, had lain beside her in the gloom 

Of moon and shade, and whispered her to ease, 

XXIII 

Her little taper made the room seem vast, 

Caverned and empty. And her beating heart 
Rapped through the silence all about her cast 

Like some loud, dreadful death-watch taking part 
In this sad vigil. Slowly she undrest, 

Put out the light and crept into her bed. 
The linen sheets were fragrant, but so cold. 

And brimming tears she shed. 
Sobbing and quivering in her barren nest. 
Her weeping lips into the pillow prest. 

Her eyes sealed fast within its smothering foldc 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 27 

XXIV 

The morning brought her a more stoic mind. 

And sunshine struck across the polished floor. 
She wondered whether this day she should find 

Gervase a-fishing, and so listen more. 
Much more again, to all he had to tell. 

And he was there, but waiting to begin 

Until she came. They fished awhile, then went 

To the old seat within 
The cherry's shade. He pleased her very well 
By his discourse. But ever he must dwell 
Upon Sir Everard. Each incident 

XXV 

Must be related and each term explained. 

How troops were set in battle, how a siege 
Was ordered and conducted. She complained 

Because he bungled at the fall of Liege. 



28 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The curious names of parts of forts she knew. 
And aired with conscious pride her ravelins. 

And counterscarps, and lunes. The day drew 
on. 
And his dead fish's fins 
In the hot sunshine turned a mauve-green hue. 
At last Gervase, guessing the hour, withdrew. 
But she sat long in still oblivion. 

XXVI 

Then he would bring her books, and read to her 
The poems of Dr. Donne, and the blue river 

Would murmur through the reading, and a stir 
Of birds and bees make the white petals shiver, 

And one or two would flutter prone and lie 

Spotting the smooth-clipped grass. The days went 

by 

Threaded with talk and verses. Green leaves 
pushed 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 99 

Through blossoms stubbornly. 
Gervase, unconscious of dishonesty, 
Fell into strong and watchful loving, free 

He thought, since always would his lips be hushed. 

XXVII 

But lips do not stay silent at command, 

And Gervase strove in vain to order his. 
Luckily Eunice did not understand 

That he but read himself aloud, for this 
Their friendship would have snapped. She treated 
him 
And spoilt him like a brother. It was now 

"Gervase" and "Eunice" with them, and he 
dined 
Whenever she'd allow. 
In the oak parlour, underneath the dim 
Old pictured Framptons, opposite her slim 
Figure, so bright against the chair behind. 



so MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

XXVIII 

Eunice was happier than she had been 

For many days, and yet the hours were long. 
All Gervase told to her but made her lean 

More heavily upon the past. Among 
Her hopes she lived, even when she was giving 
Her morning orders, even when she twined 

Nosegays to deck her parlours. With the 
thought 
Of Everard, her mind 
Solaced its solitude, and in her striving 
To do as he would wish was all her living. 

She welcomed Gervase for the news he brought. 

XXIX 

Black-hearts and white-hearts, bubbled with the sun. 
Hid in their leaves and knocked against each other. 
Eunice was standing, panting with her run 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 31 

Up to the tool-house just to get another 
Basket. All those which she had brought were filled. 
And still Gervase pelted her from above. 

The buckles of his shoes flashed higher and 
higher 
Until his shoulders strove 
Quite through the top. *' Eunice, your spirit's filled 
This tree. White-hearts!" He shook, and cherries 
spilled 
And spat out from the leaves like falling fire. 

XXX 

The wide, sun-winged June morning spread itself 
Over the quiet garden. And they packed 

Full twenty baskets with the fruit. "My shelf 
Of cordials will be stored with what it lacked. 

In future, none of us will drink strong ale. 
But cherry-brandy." "Vastly good, I vow," 
And Gervase gave the tree another shake. 



32 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The cherries seemed to flow 
Out of the sky in cloudfuls, like blown hail. 
Swift Lady Eunice ran, her farthingale. 
Unnoticed, tangling in a fallen rake. 

XXXI 

She gave a little cry and fell quite prone 

In the long grass, and lay there very still. 
Gervase leapt from the tree at her soft moan. 

And kneeling over her, with clumsy skill 
Unloosed her bodice, fanned her with his hat. 

And his unguarded lips pronounced his heart. 
"Eunice, my Dearest Girl, where are you hurt?'* 

His trembling fingers dart 
Over her limbs seeking some wound. She strove 
To answer, opened wide her eyes, above 
Her knelt Sir Everard, with face alert. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 33 

XXXII 

Her eyelids fell again at that sweet sight, 

"My Love!" she murmured, "Dearest! Oh, my 
Dear!" 
He took her in his arms and bore her right 
And tenderly to the old seat, and "Here 
I have you mine at last," she said, and swooned 
Under his kisses. When she came once more 

To sight of him, she smiled in comfort knowing 
Herself laid as before 
Close covered on his breast. And all her glowing 
Youth answered him, and ever nearer growing 

She twined him in her arms and soft festooned 

XXXIII 
Herself about him like a flowering vine. 

Drawing his lips to cling upon her own. 
A ray of sunlight pierced the leaves to shine 



34 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Where her half-opened bodice let be shown 
Her white throat fluttering to his soft caress. 
Half -gasping with her gladness. And her pledge 

She whispers, melting with delight. A twig 
Snaps in the hornbeam hedge. 
A cackling laugh tears through the quietness. 
Eunice starts up in terrible distress. 

"My God ! What's that?" Her staring eyes are 
big. 

XXXIV 

Revulsed emotion set her body shaking 

As though she had an ague. Gervase swore. 
Jumped to his feet in such a dreadful taking 

His face was ghastly with the look it wore. 
Crouching and slipping through the trees, a man 

In worn, blue livery, a humpbacked thing. 

Made off. But turned every few steps to gaze 

At Eunice, and to fling 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 35 

Vile looks and gestures back. "The ruffian ! 
By Christ's Death ! I will split him to a span 

Of hog's thongs." She grasped at his sleeve, 
"Gervase ! 

XXXV 

What are you doing here ? Put down that sword. 

That's only poor old Tony, crazed and lame. 
We never notice him. With my dear Lord 

I ought not to have minded that he came. 
But, Gervase, it surprises me that you 

Should so lack grace to stay here." With one 
hand 
She held her gaping bodice to conceal 
Her breast. "I must demand 
Your instant absence. Everard, but new 
Retimied, will hardly care for guests. Adieu." 

"Eunice, you're mad." His brain began to reel. 



36 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

XXXVI 

He tried again to take her, tried to twist 

Her arms about him. Truly, she had said 
Nothing should ever part them. In a mist 

She pushed him from her, clasped her aching head 
In both her hands, and rocked and sobbed aloud. 

**0h! Where is Everard? What does this mean? 
So lately come to leave me thus alone ! " 

But Gervase had not seen 
Sir Everard. Then, gently, to her bowed 
And sickening spirit, he told of her proud 

Surrender to him. He could hear her moan. 

XXXVII 

Then shame swept over her and held her numb. 
Hiding her anguished face against the seat. 

At last she rose, a woman stricken — dumb — 
And trailed away with slowly-dragging feet. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS S7 

Gervase looked after her, but feared to pass 
The barrier set between them. All his rare 

Joy broke to fragments — worse than that, 
unreal. 
And standing lonely there. 
His swollen heart burst out, and on the grass 
He flung himself and wept. He knew, alas ! 
The loss so great his life could never heal. 

XXXVIII 

For days thereafter Eunice lived retired. 

Waited upon by one old serving-maid. 
She would not leave her chamber, and desired 

Only to hide herself. She was afraid 
Of what her eyes might trick her into seeing. 

Of what her longing urge her then to do. 
What was this dreadful illness solitude 

Had tortured her into ? 
Her hours went by in a long constant fleeing 



38 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The thought of that one morning. And her being 
Bruised itself on a happening so rude. 

XXXIX 

It grew ripe Summer, when one morning came 

Her tirewoman with a letter, printed 
Upon the seal were the Deane crest and name. 

With utmost gentleness, the letter hinted 
His understanding and his deep regret. 

But would she not permit him once again 
To pay her his profound respects ? No word 

Of what had passed should pain 
Her resolution. Only let them get 
Back the old comradeship. Her eyes were wet 
With starting tears, now truly she deplored 

XL 

His misery. Yes, she was wrong to keep 

Away from him. He hardly was to blame. 
*Twas she — she shuddered and began to weep. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 39 

'Twas her fault ! Hers ! Her everlasting shame 
Was that she suffered him, whom not at all 

She loved. Poor Boy! Yes, they must still be 
friends. 
She owed him that to keep the balance straight. 
It was such poor amends 
Which she could make for rousing hopes to gaU 
Him with their unfulfilment. Tragical 

It was, and she must leave him desolate. 

XLI 

Hard silence he had forced upon his lips 

For long and long, and would have done so still 
Had not she — here she pressed her finger tips 

Against her heavy eyes. Then with forced will 
She wrote that he might come, sealed with the arms 
Of Crowe and Frampton twined. Her heart felt 
lighter 
When this was done. It seemed her constant care 



40 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Might some day cease to fright her. 
Illness could be no crime, and dreadful harms 
Did come from too much sunshine. Her alarms 
Would lessen when she saw him standing there, 

XLII 

Simple and kind, a brother just returned 

From journeying, and he would treat her so. 
She knew his honest heart, and if there burned 

A spark in it he would not let it show. 
But when he really came, and stood beside 

Her underneath the fruitless cherry boughs. 
He seemed a tired man, gaunt, leaden-eyed. 

He made her no more vows. 
Nor did he mention one thing he had tried 
To put into his letter. War supplied 

Him topics. And his mind seemed occupied. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 41 

XLIII 
Daily they met. And gravely walked and talked. 

He read her no more verses, and he stayed 
Only until their conversation, balked 

Of every natural channel, fled dismayed. 
Again the next day she would meet him, trying 
To give her tone some healthy sprightliness. 

But his uneager dignity soon chilled 
Her well-prepared address. 
Thus Summer waned, and in the mornings, crying 
Of wild geese startled Eunice, and their flying 
Whirred overhead for days and never stilled. 

XLIV 

One afternoon of grey clouds and white wind, 

Eunice awaited Gervase by the river. 
The Dartle splashed among the reeds and whined 

Over the willow-roots, and a long sliver 



42 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Of caked and slobbered foam crept up the bank. 
All through the garden, drifts of skirling leaves 
Blew up, and settled down, and blew again. 
The cherry-trees were weaves 
Of empty, knotted branches, and a dank 
Mist hid the house, mouldy it smelt and rank ' 
With sodden wood, and still unfailing rain. 

XLV 
Eunice paced up and down. No joy she took 
At meeting Gervase, but the custom grown 
Still held her. He was late. She sudden shook. 
And caught at her stopped heart. Her eyes had 
shown 
Sir Everard emerging from the mist. 

His uniform was travel-stained and torn. 

His jackboots muddy, and his eager stride 
Jangled his spurs. A thorn 
Entangled, trailed behind him. To the tryst 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 43 

He hastened. Eunice shuddered, ran — a twist 
Round a sharp turning and she fled to hide. 

XLVI 

But he had seen her as she swiftly ran, 

A flash of white against the river's grey. 
"Eunice," he called. "My DarHng. Eunice. Can 

You hear me ? It is Everard. All day 
I have been riding like the very devil 

To reach you sooner. Are you startled, Dear.^^" 
He broke into a run and followed her. 

And caught her, faint with fear. 
Cowering and trembling as though she some evil 
Spirit were seeing. "What means this uncivil 

Greeting, Dear Heart ?" He saw her senses blur. 

XLVII 

Swaying and catching at the seat, she tried 
To speak, but only gurgled in her throat. 
At last, straining to hold herself, she cried 



44 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

To him for pity, and her strange words smote 
A coldness through him, for she begged Gervase 
To leave her, 'twas too much a second time. 

Gervase must go, always Gervase, her mind 
Repeated like a rhyme 
This name he did not know. In sad amaze 
He watched her, and that hunted, fearful gaze. 
So unremembering and so unkind. 

XLVIII 

Softly he spoke to her, patiently dealt 

With what he feared her madness. By and by 
He pierced her understanding. Then he knelt 

Upon the seat, and took her hands : "Now try 
To think a minute I am come, my Dear, 

Unharmed and back on furlough. Are you glad 
To have your lover home again ? To me, 

Pickthorn has never had 
A greater pleasantness. Could you not bear 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 45 

To come and sit awhile beside me here ? 

A stone between us surely should not be." 

XLIX 

She smiled a little wan and ravelled smile, 

Then came to him and on his shoulder laid 
Her head, and they two rested there awhile. 

Each taking comfort. Not a word was said. 
But when he put his hand upon her breast 

And felt her beating heart, and with his lips 
Sought solace for her and himself. She started 

As one sharp lashed with wliips. 
And pushed him from her, moaning, his dumb quest 
Denied and shuddered from. And he, distrest. 

Loosened his wife, and long they sat there, parted. 

L 

Eunice was very quiet all that day, 

A little dazed, and yet she seemed content. 



46 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

At candle-time, he asked if she would play 
Upon her harpsichord, at once she went 
And tinlded airs from LuUy's Carnival 

And BacchuSy newly brought away from France. 

Then jaunted through a lively rigadoon 
To please him with a dance 
By Purcell, for he said that surely all 
Good Englishmen had pride in national 

Accomplishment. But tiring of it soon 

LI 

He whispered her that if she had forgiven 
His startling her that afternoon, the clock 

Marked early bed-time. Surely it was Heaven 
He entered when she opened to his knock. 

The hours rustled in the trailing wind 

Over the chimney. Close they lay and knew 
Only that they were wedded. At his touch 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 47 

Anxiety she threw 
Away like a shed garment, and inclined 
Herself to cherish him, her happy mind 

Quivering, mithinking, loving overmuch. 

LII 

Eunice lay long awake in the cool night 

After her husband slept. She gazed with joy 
Into the shadows, painting them with bright 

Pictures of all her future life's employ. 
Twin gems they were, set to a single jewel, ' 

Each shining with the other. Soft she turned 
And felt his breath upon her hair, and prayed 

Her happiness was earned. 
Past Earls of Crowe should give their blood for fuel 
To light this Frampton's hearth-fire. By no cruel 
Affrightings would she ever be dismayed. 



48 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

LIU 

When Everard, next day, asked her in joke 

What name it was that she had called him by. 
She told him of Gervase, and as she spoke 

She hardly realized it was a lie. 
Her vision she related, but she hid 

The fondness into which she had been led. 
Sir Everard just laughed and pinched her ear. 

And quite out of her head 
The matter drifted. Then Sir Everard chid 
Himself for laziness, and off he rid 

To see his men and count his farming-gear. 

LIV 

At supper he seemed overspread with gloom. 
But gave no reason why, he only asked 

More questions of Gervase, and round the room 
He walked with restless strides. At last he tasked 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 49 

Her with a greater feeling for this man 
Than she had given. Eimice quick denied 
The shghtest interest other than a friend 
Might claim. But he replied 
He thought she underrated. Then a ban 
He put on talk and music. He'd a plan 

To work at, draining swamps at Pickthorn End. 

LV 

Next morning Eunice found her Lord still changed. 

Hard and unkind, with bursts of anger. Pride 
Kept him from speaking out. His probings ranged 

All round his torment. Lady Eunice tried 
To sooth him. So a week went by, and then 

His anguish flooded over ; with clenched hands 
Striving to stem his words, he told her plain 

Tony had seen them, "brands 
Burning in Hell," the man had said. Again 
Eunice described her vision, and how when 

Awoke at last she had known dreadful pain. 



50 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

LVI 

He could not credit it, and misery fed 

Upon his spirit, day by day it grew. 
To Gervase he forbade the house, and led 

The Lady Eunice such a life she flew 
At his approaching footsteps. Winter came 

Snowing and blustering through the Manor trees. 
All the roof-edges spiked with icicles 

In fluted companies. 
The Lady Eunice with her tambour-frame 
Kept herself sighing company. The flame 
Of the birch fire glittered on the walls. 

LVII 

A letter was brought to her as she sat. 

Unsealed, unsigned. It told her that his wound. 

The writer's, had so well recovered that 
To join his regiment he felt him bound. 



MEN, WOMEN" AND GHOSTS 51 

But would she not wish him one short "Godspeed," 
He asked no more. Her greeting would suffice. 

He had resolved he never should return. 
Would she this sacrifice 
Make for a dying man ? How could she read 
The rest ! But forcing her eyes to the deed. 

She read. Then dropped it in the fire to burn. 

LVin 

Gervase had set the river for their meeting 

As farthest from the farms where Everard 
Spent all his days. How should he know such cheat- 
ing 

Was quite expected, at least no dullard 
Was Everard Frampton. Hours by hours he hid 

Among the willows watching. Dusk had come. 
And from the Manor he had long been gone. 

Eunice her burdensome 
Task set about. Hooded and cloaked, she slid 



52 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Over the slippery paths, and soon amid 
The sallows saw a boat tied to a stone. 

LIX 

Gervase arose, and kissed her hand, then pointed 

Into the boat. She shook her head, but he 
Begged her to realize why, and with disjointed 

Words told her of what peril there might be 
From listeners along the river bank. 

A push would take them out of earshot. Ten 
Minutes was all he asked, then she should land. 

He go away again. 
Forever this time. Yet how could he thank 
Her for so much compassion. Here she sank 
Upon a thwart, and bid him quick unstrand 

LX 

His boat. He cast the rope, and shoved the keel 

Free of the gravel ; jumped, and dropped beside 
Her ; took the oars, and they began to steal 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 53 

Under the overhanging trees. A wide 
Gash of red lantern-light cleft like a blade 
Into the gloom, and struck on Eunice sitting 

Rigid and stark upon the after thwart. 
It blazed upon their flitting 
In merciless light. A moment so it stayed. 
Then was extinguished, and Sir Everard made 
One leap, and landed just a fraction short. 

LXI 

His weight upon the gunwale tipped the boat 

To straining balance. Everard lurched and seized 
His wife and held her smothered to his coat. 

"Everard, loose me, we shall drown — " and squeezed 
Against him, she beat with her hands. He gasped 

"Never, by God !" The slidden boat gave way 
And the black foamy water split — and met. 

Bubbled up through the spray 
A wailing rose and in the branches rasped. 



54 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And creaked, and stilled. Over the treetops, clasped 
In the blue evening, a clear moon was set. 

LXII 

They lie entangled in the twisting roots. 

Embraced forever. Their cold marriage bed 
Close-canopied and curtained by the shoots 

Of willows and pale birches. At the head. 
White lilies, like still swans, placidly float 

And sway above the pebbles. Here are waves 
Sun-smitten for a threaded counterpane 

Gold- woven on their graves. 
In perfect quietness they sleep, remote 
In the green, rippled twilight. Death has smote 
Them to perpetual oneness who were twain. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 55 



THE CREMONA VIOLIN 

PART FIRST 

Frau Concert-Meister Altgelt shut the door. 
A storm was rising, heavy gusts of wind 
Swirled through the trees, and scattered leaves before 
Her on the clean, flagged path. The sky behind 
The distant town was black, and sharp defined 
Against it shone the lines of roofs and towers. 
Superimposed and flat like cardboard flowers. 

A pasted city on a purple ground. 

Picked out with luminous paint, it seemed. The 

cloud 
Split on an edge of lightning, and a sound 
Of rivers full and rushing boomed through bowed. 
Tossed, hissing branches. Thunder rumbled loud 



56 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Beyond the town fast swallowing into gloom. 
Frau Altgelt closed the windows of each room. 

She bustled round to shake by constant moving 

The strange, weird atmosphere. She stirred the fire. 

She twitched the supper-cloth as though improving 

Its careful setting, then her own attire 

Came in for notice, tiptoeing higher and higher 

She peered into the wall-glass, now adjusting 

A straying lock, or else a ribbon thrusting 

This way or that to suit her. At last sitting. 

Or rather plumping down upon a chair. 

She took her work, the stocking she was knitting. 

And watched the rain upon the window glare 

In white, bright drops. Through the black glass a 

flare 
Of Hghtning squirmed about her needles. "Oh !" 
She cried. "What can be keeping Theodore so !" 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 57 

A roll of thunder set the casements clapping. 
Frau Altgelt flung her work aside and ran, 
Pulled open the house door, with kerchief flapping 
She stood and gazed along the street. A man 
Flung back the garden-gate and nearly ran 
Her down as she stood in the door. "Why, Dear, 
What in the name of patience brings you here ? 

Quick, Lotta, shut the door, my violin 

I fear is wetted. Now, Dear, bring a light. 

This clasp is very much too worn and thin. 

I'll take the other fiddle out to-night 

If it still rains. Tut ! Tut ! my child, you're quite 

Clumsy. Here, help me, hold the case while I — 

Give me the candle. No, the inside's dry. 

Thank God for that ! Well, Lotta, how are you ? 
A bad storm, but the house still stands, I see. 
Is my pipe filled, my Dear ? I'll have a few 



58 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Puffs and a snooze before I eat my tea. 
What do you say ? That you were feared for me ? 
Nonsense, my child. Yes, kiss me, now don't talk. 
I need a rest, the theatre's a long walk." 

Her needles still, her hands upon her lap 

Patiently laid, Charlotta Altgelt sat 

And watched the rain-run window. In his nap 

Her husband stirred and muttered. Seeing that, 

Charlotta rose and softly, pit-a-pat. 

Climbed up the stairs, and in her little room 

Found sighing comfort with a moon in bloom. 

But even rainy windows, silver-lit 

By a new-burst, storm-whetted moon, may give 

But poor content to loneliness, and it 

Was hard for young Charlotta so to strive 

And down her eagerness and learn to live 

In placid quiet. While her husband slept, 

Charlotta in her upper chamber wept. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 59 

Herr Concert-Meister Altgelt was a man 

Gentle and unambitious, that alone 

Had kept him back. He played as few men can, 

Drawing out of his instrument a tone 

So shimmering-sweet and palpitant, it shone 

Like a bright thread of sound hung in the air. 

Afloat and swinging upward, slim and fair. 

Above all things, above Charlotta his wife, ' 

Herr Altgelt loved his violin, a fine 

Cremona pattern, Stradivari's Ufe 

Was flowering out of early discipline 

When this was fashioned. Of soft-cutting pine 

The belly was. The back of broadly curled 

Maple, the head made thick and sharply whirled. 

The slanting, youthful sound-holes through 
The belly of fine, vigorous pine 
Mellowed each note and blew 



60 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

It out again with a woody flavour 
Tanged and fragrant as fir-trees are 
When breezes in their needles jar. 

The varnish was an orange-brown 

Lustered like glass that's long laid down 

Under a crumbling villa stone. 

Purfled stoutly, with mitres which point 

Straight up the corners. Each curve and joint 

Clear, and bold, and thin. 

Such was Herr Theodore's violin. 

Seven o'clock, the Concert-Meister gone 
With his best violin, the rain being stopped, 
Frau Lotta in the kitchen sat alone 
Watching the embers which the fire dropped. 
The china shone upon the dresser, topped 
By polished copper vessels which her skill 
Kept brightly burnished. It was very still. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 61 

An air from Orf^o hummed in her head. 

Herr Altgelt had been practising before 

The night's performance. Charlotta had plead 

With him to stay with her. Even at the door 

She'd begged him not to go. **I do implore 

You for this evening, Theodore," she had said. 

** Leave them to-night, and stay with me instead." 

**A silly poppet !" Theodore pinched her ear. 

*' You'd like to have our good Elector turn 

Me out I think." "But, Theodore, something queer 

Ails me. Oh, do but notice how they burn. 

My cheeks ! The thunder worried me. You're stern, 

And cold, and only love your work, I know. 

But Theodore, for this evening, do not go." 

But he had gone, hurriedly at the end. 

For she had kept him talking. Now she sat 



62 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Alone again, always alone, the trend 

Of all her thinking brought her back to that 

She wished to banish. What would life be ? What ? 

For she was young, aiid loved, while he was moved 

Only by music. Each day that was proved. 

Each day he rose and practised. While he played. 
She stopped her work and listened, and her heart 
Swelled painfully beneath her bodice. Swayed 
And longing, she would hide from him her smart. 
" WeU, Lottchen, will that do ?" Then what a start 
She gave, and she would run to him and cry. 
And he would gently chide her, "Fie, Dear, fie. 

I'm glad I played it well. But such a taking ! 
You'll hear the thing enough before I've done." 
And she would draw away from him, still shaking. 
Had he but guessed she was another one. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 63 

Another violin. Her strings were aching. 
Stretched to the touch of his bow hand, again 
He played and she almost broke at the strain. 

Where was the use of thinking of it now. 
Sitting alone and listening to the clock ! 
She'd best make haste and knit another row. 
Three hours at least must pass before his knock 
Would startle her. It always was a shock. 
She listened — listened — for so long before. 
That when it came her hearing almost tore. 

She caught herself just starting in to listen. 

What nerves she had : rattling like brittle sticks ! 

She wandered to the window, for the glisten 

Of a bright moon was tempting. Snuffed the wicks 

Of her two candles. Still she could not fix 

To anything. The moon in a broad swath 

Beckoned her out and down the garden-path. 



64 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Against the house, her hollyhocks stood high 

And black, their shadows doubling them. The night 

Was white and still with moonlight, and a sigh 

Of blowing leaves was there, and the dim flight 

Of insects, and the smell of aconite. 

And stocks, and Marvel of Peru. She flitted 

Along the path, where blocks of shadow pitted 

The even flags. She let herself go dreaming 

Of Theodore her husband, and the tune 

From Orf^o swam through her mind, but seeming 

Changed — shriller. Of a sudden, the clear moon 

Showed her a passer-by, inopportune 

Indeed, but here he was, whistling and striding. 

Lotta squeezed in between the currants, hiding. 

"The best laid plans of mice and men," alas ! 
The stranger came indeed, but did not pass. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 65 

Instead, he leant upon the garden-gate, 
Folding his arms and whistling. Lotta's state. 
Crouched in the prickly currants, on wet grass. 
Was far from pleasant. Still the stranger stayed. 
And Lotta in her currants watched, dismayed. 

He seemed a proper fellow standing there 
In the bright moonshine. His cocked hat was laced 
With silver, and he wore his own brown hair 
Tied, but unpowdered. His whole bearing graced 
A fine cloth coat, and ruffled shirt, and chased 
Sword-hilt. Charlotta looked, but her position 
Was hardly easy. When would his volition 

Suggest his walking on ? And then that tune ! 
A half-a-dozen bars from Orjio 

Gone over and over, and murdered. What Fortune 
Had brought him there to stare about him so ? 
**Ach, Gott im Himmel ! Why will he not go !'* 

F 



66 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Thought Lotta, but the young man whistled on. 
And seemed in no great hurry to be gone. 

Charlotta, crouched among the currant bushes. 
Watched the moon slowly dip from twig to twig. 
If Theodore should chance to come, and blushes 
Streamed over her. He would not care a fig. 
He'd only laugh. She pushed aside a sprig 
Of sharp-edged leaves and peered, then she uprose 
Amid her bushes. "Sir," said she, "pray whose 

Garden do you suppose you're watching ? Why 
Do you stand there ? I really must insist 
Upon your leaving. 'Tis unmannerly 
To stay so long." The young man gave a twist 
And turned about, and in the amethyst 
Moonlight he saw her like a nymph half -risen 
From the green bushes which had been her prisono 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 67 

He swept his hat ofif in a hurried bow. 
**Your pardon, Madam, I had no idea 
I was not quite alone, and that is how 
I came to stay. My trespass was not sheer 
Impertinence. I thought no one was here. 
And really gardens cry to be admired. 
To-night especially it seemed required. 

And may I beg to introduce myself ? 

Heinrich Marohl of Munich. And your name ?"/ 

Charlotta told him. And the artful elf 

Promptly exclaimed about her husband's fame. 

So Lotta, half-unwilling, slowly came 

To conversation with him. When she went 

Into the house, she foimd the evening spent. 

Theodore arrived quite wearied out and teased. 
With all excitement in him burned away. . 



68 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

It had gone well, he said, the audience pleased. 
And he had played his very best to-day, 
But afterwards he had been forced to stay 
And practise with the stupid ones. His head 
Ached furiously, and he must get to bed. 

PABT SECOND 

Herr Concert-Meister Altgelt played. 

And the four strings of liis violin 

Were spinning like bees on a day in Spring. 

The notes rose into the wide sun-mote 

Which slanted through the window. 

They lay like coloured beads a-row. 

They knocked together and parted. 

And started to dance. 

Skipping, tripping, each one slipping 

Under and over the others so 

That the polychrome fire streamed like a lance 

Or a comet's tail. 

Behind them. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 69 

Then a wail arose — crescendo — 

And dropped from ofif the end of the bow. 

And the dancing stopped. 

A scent of hlies filled the room. 

Long and slow. Each large white bloom 

Breathed a soimd which was holy perfume from 

a blessed censer. 
And the hum of an organ tone. 
And they waved like fans in a hall of stone 
Over a bier standing there in the centre, alone. 
Each lily bent slowly as it was blown. 
Like smoke they rose from the violin — 
Then faded as a swifter bowing 
Jumbled the notes like wavelets flowing 
Li a splashing, pashing, ripphng motion 
Between broad meadows to an ocean 
Wide as a day and blue as a flower. 
Where every hour , 



70 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Gulls dipped, and scattered, and squawked, and 

squealed. 
And over the marshes the Angelus pealed. 
And the prows of the fishing-boats were spattered 
With spray. 

And away a couple of frigates were starting 
To race to Java with all sails set. 
Topgallants, and royals, and stunsails, and jibs. 
And wide moonsails ; and the shining rails 
Were polished so bright they sparked in the sun. 
All the sails went up with a run : 

"They call me Hanging Johnny, 

Away-i-oh ; 
They call me Hanging Johnny, ' 

So hang, boys, hang." 
And the sun had set and the high moon whitened. 
And the ship heeled over to the breeze. 
He drew her into the shade of the sails. 
And whispered tales 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 71 

Of voyages in the China seas. 

And his arm around her 

Held and bound her. 

She almost swooned. 

With the breeze and the moon 

And the slipping sea. 

And he beside her. 

Touching her, leaning — ] 

The ship careening. 

With the white moon steadily shining over 

Her and her lover, 

Theodore, still her lover ! ' 

Then a quiver fell on the crowded notes. 

And slowly floated 

A single note which spread and spread 

Till it filled the room with a shimmer like gold. 

And noises shivered throughout its length. 

And tried its strength. 



72 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

They pulled it, and tore it. 
And the stuflf waned thinner, but still it bore it. 
Then a wide rent 
Split the arching tent. 
And balls of fire spurted through, , 
Spitting yellow, and mauve, and blue. 
One by one they were quenched as they fell. 
Only the blue burned steadily. 
Paler and paler it grew, and — faded — away. 
Herr Altgelt stopped. 

"Well, Lottachen, my Dear, what do you say? 

I think I'm in good trim. Now let's have dinner. 

What's this, my Love, you're very sweet to-day. 

I wonder how it happens I'm the winner 

Of so much sweetness. But I think you're thinner ; 

You're like a bag of feathers on my knee. 

Why, Lotta child, you're almost strangling me. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 73 

I'm glad you're going out this afternoon. 
The days are getting short, and I'm so tied 
At the Court Theatre my poor little bride 
Has not much junketing I fear, but soon 
I'll ask our manager to grant a boon. . 
To-night, perhaps, I'll get a pass for you. 
And when I go, why Lotta can come too. 

Now dinner. Love. I want some onion soup 

To whip me up till that rehearsal's over. 

You know it's odd how some women can stoop ! 

FrSulein Gebnitz has taken on a lover, 

A Jew named Goldstein. No one can discover 

If it's his money. But she lives alone 

Practically. Gebnitz is a stone. 

Pores over books all day, and has no ear 

For his wife's singing. Artists must have men ; 



74 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

They need appreciation. But it's queer 
"What messes people make of their lives, when 
They should know more. If Gebnitz finds out, then 
His wife will pack. Yes, shut the door at once. 
I did not feel it cold, I am a dunce.'* 

Frau Altgelt tied her bonnet on and went 
Into the streets. A bright, crisp Autumn wind 
Flirted her skirts and hair. A turbulent. 
Audacious wind it was, now close behind. 
Pushing her bonnet forward till it twined 
The strings across her face, then from in front 
Slantingly swinging at her with a shunt, 

Until she lay against it, struggling, pushing. 
Dismayed to find her clothing tightly bound 
Around her, every fold and wrinkle crushing 
Itself upon her, so that she was wound 
In draperies as clinging as those found 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 75 

Sucking about a sea nymph on the frieze 
Of some old Grecian temple. In the breeze 

The shops and houses had a quality 
Of hard and dazzling colour ; something sharp 
And buoyant, like white, puffing sails at sea. 
The city streets were twanging like a harp. 
Charlotta caught the movement, skippingly 
She blew along the pavement, hardly knowing 
Toward what destination she was going. 

She fetched up opposite a jeweller's shop. 
Where filigreed tiaras shone like crowns. 
And necklaces of emeralds seemed to drop 
And then float up again with lightness. Browns 
Of striped agates struck her like cold frowns 
Amid the gaiety of topaz seals. 
Carved though they were with heads, and arms, and 
wheels. 



76 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

A row of pencils knobbed with quartz or sard 
Delighted her. And rings of every size 
Turned smartly round like hoops before her eyes. 
Amethyst-flamed or ruby-girdled, jarred 
To spokes and flashing triangles, and starred 
Like rockets bursting on a festal day. 
Charlotta could not tear herself away. 

With eyes glued tightly on a golden box. 
Whose rare enamel piqued her with its hue. 
Changeable, iridescent, shuttlecocks 
Of shades and lustres always darting through 
Its level, superimposing sheet of blue, 
Charlotta did not hear footsteps approaching. 
She started at the words : "Am I encroaching ?'* 

**0h, Heinrich, how you frightened me ! I thought 
We were to meet at three, is it quite that?" 
"No, it is not," he answered, "but I've caught 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 77 

The trick of missing you. One thing is flat, 
I cannot go on this way. Life is what 
Might best be conjured up by the word : *HelI.* 
Dearest, when will you come?" Lotta, to quell 

His effervescence, pointed to the gems 
Within the window, asked him to admire 
A bracelet or a buckle. But one stems 
Uneasily the burning of a fire. 
Heinrich was chafing, pricked by his desire. 
Little by little she wooed him to her mood 
Until at last he promised to be good. 

But here he started on another tack ; 

To buy a jewel, which one would Lotta choose. 

She vainly urged against him all her lack 

Of other trinkets. Should she dare to use 

A ring or brooch her husband might accuse 

Her of extravagance, and ask to see 

A strict accounting, or still worse might be. 



78 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

But Heinrich would not be persuaded. Why 

Should he not give her what he liked ? And in 

He went, determined certainly to buy 

A thing so beautiful that it would win 

Her wavering fancy. Atlgelt's violin 

He would outscore by such a handsome jewel 

That Lotta could no longer be so cruel ! 

Pity Charlotta, torn in diverse ways. 

If she went in with him, the shopman might 

Recognize her, give her her name ; in days 

To come he could denounce her. In her fright 

She almost fled. But Heinrich would be quite 

Capable of piu-suing. By and by 

She pushed the door and entered hurriedly. 

It took some pains to keep him from bestowing 
A pair of ruby earrings, carved like roses. 
The setting twined to represent the growing 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 79 

Tendrils and leaves, upon her. "Who supposes 
I could obtain such things ! It simply closes 
All comfort for me." So he changed his mind 
And bought as slight a gift as he could find. 

A locket, frosted over with seed pearls. 
Oblong and slim, for wearing at the neck. 
Or hidden in the bosom ; their joined curls 
Should lie in it. And further to bedeck 
His love, Heinrich had picked a whiff, a fleck. 
The merest puff of a thin, linked chain 
To hang it from. Lotta could not refrain 

From weeping as they sauntered down the street. 

She did not want the locket, yet she did. 

To have him love her she found very sweet. 

But it is hard to keep love always hid. 

Then there was something in her heart which chid 

Her, told her she loved Theodore in him, 

That all these meetings were a foolish whim. 



80 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

She thought of Theodore and the life they led, 
So near together, but so little mingled. 
The great clouds bulged and bellied overhead, 
And the fresh wind about her body tingled ; 
The crane of a large warehouse creaked and jingled ; 
Charlotta held her breath for very fear. 
About her in the street she seemed to hear : 
"They call me Hanging Johnny, 

Away-i-oh ; 
They call me Hanging Johnny, 

So hang, boys, hang.** 

And it was Theodore, under the racing skies. 
Who held her and who whispered in her ear. 
She knew her heart was telling her no lies. 
Beating and hammering. He was so dear. 
The touch of him would send her in a queer 
Swoon that was half an ecstasy. And yearning 
For Theodore, she wandered, slowly turning 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 81 

Street after street as Heinrich wished it so. 
He had some aim, she had forgotten what. 
Their progress was confused and very slow, i 
But at the last they reached a lonely spot, 
A garden far above the highest shot 
Of soaring steeple. At their feet, the town 
Spread open like a chequer-board laid down. 

Lotta was dimly conscious of the rest. 
Vaguely remembered how he clasped the chain 
About her neck. She treated it in jest. 
And saw his face cloud over with sharp pain. 
Then suddenly she felt as though a strain 
Were put upon her, collared like a slave. 
Leashed in the meshes of this thing he gave. 

She seized the flimsy rings with both her hands 
To snap it, but they held with odd persistence. 
Her eyes were blinded by two wind-blown strands 



82 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Of hair which had been loosened. Her resistance 
Melted within her, from remotest distance, 
Misty, unreal, his face grew warm and near. 
And giving way she knew him very dear. 

For long he held her, and they both gazed down 
At the wide city, and its blue, bridged river. 
From wooing he jested with her, snipped the blown 
Strands of her hair, and tied them with a sliver 
Cut from his own head. But she gave a shiver 
When, opening the locket, they were placed 
Under the glass, commingled and enlaced. 

"When will you have it so with us?" He sighed. 
She shook her head. He pressed her further. "No, 
No, Heinrich, Theodore loves me," and she tried 
To free herself and rise. He held her so. 
Clipped by his arms, she could not move nor go. 
"But you love me," he whispered, with his face 
Burning against her through her kerchief's lace. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 83 

Frau Altgelt knew she toyed with fire, knew 
That what her husband lit this other man 
Fanned to hot flame. She told herself that few 
Women were so discreet as she, who ran 
No danger since she knew what things to ban. 
She opened her house door at five o'clock, 
A short half-hour before her husband's knock. 

PART THIRD 

The Residenz-Theater sparked and hummed 
With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing. 
That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed 
With tuning up ; the wood-winds made a ring 
Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting 
Of sharp, red brass pierced every ear-drum ; patting 
From muffled tympani made a dark slatting 

Across the silver shimmering of flutes ; 
A bassoon grunted, and an oboe wailed ; 



84 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The 'celli pizzicato-ed like great lutes, 
And mutterings of double basses trailed 
Away to silence, while loud harp-strings hailed 
Their thin, bright colours down in such a scatter 
They lost themselves amid the general clatter. 

Frau Altgelt in the gallery, alone. 
Felt lifted up into another world. 
Before her eyes a thousand candles shone 
In the great chandeliers. A maze of curled 
And powdered periwigs past her eyes swirled. 
She smelt the smoke of candles guttering. 
And caught the glint of jewelled fans fluttering 

All round her in the boxes. Red and gold. 
The house, like rubies set in filigree. 
Filliped the candlelight about, and bold 
Young sparks with eye-glasses, unblushingly 
Ogled fair beauties in the balcony. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 85 

An officer went by, his steel spurs jangling. 
Behind Charlotta an old man was wrangling 

About a play-bill he had bought and lost. 

Three drunken soldiers had to be ejected. 

Frau Altgelt's eyes stared at the vacant post 

Of Concert-Meister, she at once detected 

The stir which brought him. But she felt neglected 

When with no glance about him or her way. 

He lifted up his violin to play. 

The curtain went up ? Perhaps. If so, 

Charlotta never saw it go. 

The famous Fraulein Gebnitz' singing 

Only came to her like the ringing 

Of bells at a festa 

Which swing in the air 

And nobody realizes they are there. 

They jingle and jangle. 



86 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And clang, and bang. 

And never a soul could tell whether they rang. 

For the plopping of guns and rockets 

And the chinking of silver to spend, in one's 

pockets. 
And the shuffling and clapping of feet, . 
And the loud flapping 
Of flags, with the drums. 
As the military comes. 
It's a famous tune to walk to, 
And I wonder where they're off to. 
Step-stei)-stepping to the beating of the drums. 
But the rhythm changes as though a mist 
Were curling and twisting 
Over the landscape. 

For a moment a rhythmless, tuneless fog 
Encompasses her. Then her senses jog 
To the breath of a stately minuet. 
Herr Altgelt's violin is set 
In tune to the slow, sweeping bows, and retreats 

and advances. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 87 

To curtsies brushing the waxen floor as the Court 
dances. 

Long and peaceful like warm Summer nights 

When stars shine in the quiet river. And against 
the lights 

Blundering insects knock. 

And the Rathaus clock 

Booms twice, through the shrill sounds 

Of flutes and horns in the lamplit grounds. 

Pressed against him in the mazy wavering 

Of a country dance, with her short breath quaver- 
ing 

She leans upon the beating, throbbing 

Music. Laughing, sobbing. 

Feet gliding after sliding feet ; 

His — hers — 

The ballroom blurs — 

She feels the air 

Lifting her hair. 

And the lapping of water on the stone stair. 



88 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

He is there ! He is there ! 

Twang harps, and squeal, you thin violins. 

That the dancers may dance, and never discover 

The old stone stair leading down to the river 

With the chestnut-tree branches hanging over 

Her and her lover. 

Theodore, still her lover I 

The evening passed like this, in a half faint. 

Delirium with waking intervals 

Which were the entr'acts. Under the restraint 

Of a large company, the constant calls 

For oranges or syrops from the stalls 

Outside, the talk, the passing to and fro, 

Lotta sat ill at ease, incognito. 

She heard the Gebnitz praised, the tenor lauded. 

The music vaunted as most excellent. 

The scenery and the costumes were applauded. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 89 

The latter it was whispered had been sent 
From Italy. The Herr Direktor spent 
A fortune on them, so the gossips said. 
Charlotta felt a lightness in her head. 

"When the next act began, her eyes were swimming. 
Her prodded ears were aching and confused. 
The first notes from the orchestra sent skimming 
Her outward consciousness. Her brain was fused 
Into the music, Theodore's music ! Used 
To hear him play, she caught his single tone. 
For all she noticed they two were alone. 

PART FOURTH 

Frau Altgelt waited in the chilly street. 
Hustled by lackeys who ran up and down 
Shouting their coachmen's names ; forced to retreat 
A pace or two by lurching chairmen ; thrown 
Rudely aside by linkboys ; boldly shown 



90 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The ogling rapture in two bleary eyes 
Thrust close to hers in most unpleasant wise. 

Escaping these, she hit a liveried arm. 

Was sworn at by this glittering gentleman 

And ordered off. However, no great harm 

Came to her. But she looked a trifle wan 

When Theodore, her belated guardian. 

Emerged. She snuggled up against him, trembling, 

Half out of fear, half out of the assembling 

Of all the thoughts and needs his playing had given. 

Had she enjoyed herself, he wished to know. 

*'0h ! Theodore, can't you feel that it was Heaven !" 

** Heaven ! My Lottachen, and was it so? 

Gebnitz was in good voice, but all the flow 

Of her last aria was spoiled by Klops, 

A wretched flutist, she was mad as hops.'* 



I 

ii 

I 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 91 

He was so simple, so matter-of-fact, 
Charlotta Altgelt knew not what to say- 
To bring liim to her dream. His lack of tact 
Kept him explaining all the homeward way 
How this thing had gone well, that badly. "Stay, 
Theodore !" she cried at last. "You know to me 
Nothing was real, it was an ecstasy." 

And he was heartily glad she had enjoyed 
Herself so much, and said so. "But it's good 
To be got home again." He was employed 
In looking at his violin, the wood 
Was old, and evening air did it no good. 
But when he drew up to the table for tea 
Something about his wife's vivacity 

Struck him as hectic, worried him in short. 

He talked of this and that but watched her close. 

Tea over, he endeavoured to extort 



92 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The cause of her excitement. She arose 
And stood beside him, trying to compose 
Herself, all whipt to quivering, curdled life. 
And he, poor fool, misunderstood his wife. 

Suddenly, broken through her anxious grasp, 
Her music-kindled love crashed on him there. 
Amazed, he felt her fling against him, clasp 
Her arms about him, weighing down his chair. 
Sobbing out all her hours of despair. 
"Theodore, a woman needs to hear things proved. 
Unless you tell me, I feel I'm not loved." 

Theodore went under in this tearing wave. 

He yielded to it, and its headlong flow 

Filled him with all the energy she gave. 

He was a youth again, and this bright glow. 

This living, vivid joy he had to show 

Her what she was to him. Laughing and crying, 

She asked assurances there's no denying. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 93 

Over and over again her questions, till 

He quite convinced her, every now and then 

She kissed him, shivering as though doubting still. 

But later when they were composed and when 

She dared relax her probings, "Lottachen," 

He asked, "how is it your love has withstood 

My inadvertence ? I was made of wood." 

She told him, and no doubt she meant it truly. 
That he was sun, and grass, and wind, and sky 
To her. And even if conscience were unruly 
She salved it by neat sophistries, but why 
Suppose her insincere, it was no lie 
She said, for Heinrich was as much forgot 
As though he'd never been within earshot. 

But Theodore's hands in straying and caressing 

Fumbled against the locket where it lay 

Upon her neck. "What is this thing I'm pressing?'* 



94 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

He asked. "Let's bring it to the light of day." 
He Hfted up the locket. "It should stay 
Outside, my Dear. Your mother has good taste. 
To keep it hidden surely is a waste." 

Pity again Charlotta, straight aroused 

Out of her happiness. The locket brought 

A chilly jet of truth upon her, soused 

Under its icy spurting she was caught. 

And choked, and frozen. Suddenly she sought 

The clasp, but with such art was this contrived 

Her fumbling fingers never once arrived 

Upon it. Feeling, twisting, round and round. 

She pulled the chain quite through the locket's ring 

And still it held. Her neck, encompassed, bound. 

Chafed at the sliding meshes. Such a thing 

To hurl her out of joy ! A gilded string 

Binding her folly to her, and those curls 

Which lay entwined beneath the clustered pearls ! 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 95 

Again she tried to break the cord. It stood. 
"Unclasp it, Theodore," she begged. But he 
Refused, and being in a happy mood. 
Twitted her with her ineflSciency, 
Then looking at her very seriously : 
**I think, Charlotta, it is well to have 
Always about one what a mother gave. 

As she has taken the great pains to send' 

This jewel to you from Dresden, it will be 

Ingratitude if you do not intend 

To carry it about you constantly. 

With her fine taste you cannot disagree. 

The locket is most beautifully designed.'* 

He opened it and there the efurls were, twined. 

Charlotta's heart dropped beats like knitting-stitches. 
She burned a moment, flaming ; then she froze. 
Her face was jerked by little, nervous twitches. 



96 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

She heard her husband asking : "What are those ? " 
Put out her hand quickly to interpose. 
But stopped, the gesture half-complete, astounded 
At the calm way the question was propounded. 

"A pretty fancy. Dear, I do declare. 

Indeed I will not let you put it off. 

A lovely thought : yours and your mother's hair !" 

Charlotta hid a gasp under a cough. 

"Never with my connivance shall you doff 

This charming gift." He kissed her on the cheek. 

And Lotta suffered him, quite crushed and meek. 

When later in their room she lay awake. 
Watching the moonlight slip along the floor, 
She felt the chain and wept for Theodore's sake. 
She had loved Heinrich also, and the core 
Of truth, unlovely, startled her. Wherefore 
She vowed from now to break this double life 
And see herself only as Theodore's wife. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 97 

PART FIFTH 

It was no easy matter to convince 

Heinrich that it was finished. Hard to say 

That though they could not meet (he saw her wince) 

She still must keep the locket to allay 

Suspicion in her husband. She would pay 

Him from her savings bit by bit — the oath 

He swore at that was startling to them both/. 

Her resolution taken, Frau Altgelt 

Adhered to it, and suffered no regret. 

She found her husband all that she had felt 

His music to contain. Her days were set 

In his as though she were an amulet 

Cased in bright gold. She joyed in her confining ; 

Her eyes put out her looking-glass with shining. ' 



08 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Charlotta was so gay that old, dull tasks 

Were furbished up to seem like rituals. 

She baked and brewed as one who only asks 

The right to serve. Her daily manuals 

Of prayer were duties, and her festivals 

When Theodore praised some dish, or frankly said 

She had a knack in making up a bed. 

So Autumn went, and all the mountains round 
The city glittered white with fallen snow. 
For it was Winter. Over the hard ground 
Herr Altgelt*s footsteps came, each one a blow. 
On the swept flags behind the currant row 
Charlotta stood to greet him. But his lip 
Only flicked hers. His Concert-Meistership 

Was first again. This evening he had got 
Important news. The opera ordered from 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 99 

Young Mozart was arrived. That old despot. 
The Bishop of Salzburg, had let him come 
Himself to lead it, and the parts, still hot 
From copying, had been tried over. Never] 
Had any music started such a fever. 

The orchestra had cheered till they were hoarse. 
The singers clapped and clapped. The town was made. 
With such a great attraction through the course 
Of Carnival time. In what utter shade 
All other cities would be left ! The trade 
In music would all drift here naturally. 
In his excitement he forgot his tea. 

Lotta was forced to take his cup and put 
It in his hand. But still he rattled on. 
Sipping at intervals. The new catgut 
Strings he was using gave out such a tone 
The "Maestro" had remarked it, and had gone 



100 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Out of his way to praise him. Lotta smiled. 
He was as happy as a little child. 

From that day on, Herr Altgelt, more and more. 
Absorbed himself in work. Lotta at first 
Was patient and well-wishing. But it wore 
Upon her when two weeks had brought no burst 
Of loving from him. Then she feared the worst ; 
That his short interest in her was a light 
Flared up an instant only in the night. 

Idomeneo was the opera's name, 

A name that poor Charlotta learnt to hate. 

Herr Altgelt worked so hard he seldom came 

Home for his tea, and it was very late. 

Past midnight sometimes , when he knocked . His state 

Was like a flabby orange whose crushed skin 

Is thin with pulling, and all dented in. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 101 

He practised every morning and her heart 

Followed his bow. But often she would sit. 

While he was playing, quite withdrawn apart, ] 

Absently fingering and touching it. 

The locket, which now seemed to her a bit 

Of some gone youth. His music drew her tears. 

And through the notes he played, her dreading ears 

Heard Heinrich's voice, saying he had not changed ; 

Beer merchants had no ecstasies to take 

Their minds oflf love. So far her thoughts had 

ranged 
Away from her stem vow, she chanced to take 
Her way, one morning, quite by a mistake. 
Along the street where Heinrich had his shop. 
What harm to pass it since she should not stop ! 



102 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

It matters nothing how one day she met 
Him on a bridge, and blushed, and hurried by. 
Nor how the following week he stood to let 
Her pass, the pavement narrowing suddenly. 
How once he took her basket, and once he 
Pulled back a rearing horse who might have struck 
Her with his hoofs. It seemed the oddest luck 

How many times their business took them each 
Right to the other. Then at last he spoke. 
But she would only nod, he got no speech 
From her. Next time he treated it in joke. 
And that so lightly that her vow she broke 
And answered. So they drifted into seeing 
Each other as before. There was no fleeing. 

Christmas was over and the Carnival 

Was very near, and tripping from each tongue 

Was talk of the new opera. Each book-stall 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 103 

Flaunted it out in bills, what airs were sung. 
What singers hired. Pictures of the young 
"Maestro" were for sale. The town was mad. 
Only Charlotta felt depressed and sad. 

Each day now brought a struggle 'twixt her will 
And Heinrich's. 'Twixt her love for Theodore 
And him. Sometimes she wished to kill 
Herself to solve her problem. For a score 
Of reasons Heinrich tempted her. He bore 
Her moods with patience, and so surely urged \ 
Himself upon her, she was slowly merged , 

Into his way of thinking, and to fly 

With him seemed easy. But next morning would 

The Stradivarius undo her mood. 

Then she would realize that she must cleave 

Always to Theodore. And she would try 

To convince Heinrich she should never leave. 

And afterwards she would go home and grieve. 



104 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

All thought in Munich centered on the part 

Of January when there would be given 

Idomeneo by Wolfgang Mozart. 

The twenty-ninth was fixed. And all seats, even 

Those almost at the ceiling, which were driven 

Behind the highest gallery, were sold. 

The inches of the theatre went for gold. 

Herr Altgelt was a shadow worn so thin 
With work, he hardly printed black behind 
The candle. He and his old violin 
Made up one person. He was not unkind. 
But dazed outside his playing, and the rind. 
The pine and maple of his fiddle, guarded 
A part of him which he had quite discarded. 

It woke in the silence of frost-bright nights. 
In little lights. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 105 

Like will-o*-the-wisps flickering, fluttering, 

Here — there — 

Spurting, sputtering. 

Fading and lighting. 

Together, asunder — 

Till Lotta sat up in bed with wonder. 

And the faint grey patch of the window shone 

Upon her sitting there, alone. 

For Theodore slept. 

The twenty-eighth was last rehearsal day, 

'Twas called for noon, so early morning meant 

Herr Altgelt's only time in which to play 

His part alone. Drawn like a monk who's spent 

Himself in prayer and fasting, Theodore went 

Into the kitchen, with a weary word 

Of cheer to Lotta, careless if she heard. 

Lotta heard more than his spoken word. 
She heard the vibrating of strings and wood. 



106 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

She was washing the dishes, her hands all suds. 

When the sound began. 

Long as the span 

Of a white road snaking about a hill. 

The orchards are filled 

With cherry blossoms at butterfly poise. 

Hawthorn buds are cracking. 

And in the distance a shepherd is clacking 

His shears, snip-snipping the wool from his sheep. 

The notes are asleep. 

Lying adrift on the air 

In level lines 

Like sunlight hanging in pines and pines, 

i 

Strung and threaded. 

All imbedded 

In the blue-green of the hazy pines. 

Lines — long, straight lines ! 

And stems. 

Long, straight stems 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 107 

Pushing up 

To the cup of blue, blue sky. 

Stems growing misty 

With the many of them. 

Red-green mist 

Of the trees. 

And these 

Wood-flavoured notes. 

The back is maple and the belly is pine. 

The rich notes twine 

As though weaving in and out of leaves. 

Broad leaves 

Flapping slowly like elephants' ears. 

Waving and falling. 

Another sound peers 

Through little pine fingers. 

And lingers, peeping. 

Ping ! Ping ! pizzicato, something is cheeping. 

There is a twittering up in the branches. 



108 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

A chirp and a lilt. 

And crimson atilt on a swaying twig. 

Wings ! Wings ! 

And a little ruffled-out throat which sings. 

The forest bends, tumultuous 

With song. 

The woodpecker knocks. 

And the song-sparrow trills. 

Every fir, and cedar, and yew 

Has a nest or a bird. 

It is quite absurd 

To hear them cutting across each other : 

Peewits, and thrushes, and larks, all at once. 

And a loud cuckoo is trying to smother 

A wood-pigeon perched on a birch, 

"Roo — coo — oo — oo — " 

"Cuckoo ! Cuckoo ! That's one for you !'* 

A blackbird whistles, how sharp, how shrill ! 

And the great trees toss 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 109 

And leaves blow down, 

You can almost hear them splash on the gromid. 

The whistle again : 

It is double and loud ! 

The leaves are splashing. 

And water is dashing 

Over those creepers, for they are shrouds ; 

And men are running up them to furl the sails. 

For there is a capful of wind to-day, 

And we are already well under way. 

The deck is aslant in the bubbling breeze. 

"Theodore, please. 

Oh, Dear, how you tease !** 

And the boatswain's whistle sounds again, 

And the men pull on the sheets : 

"My name is Hanging Johnny, 

Away-i-oh ; 
They call me Hanging Johnny, 

So hang, boys, hang." 



110 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The trees of the forest are masts, tall masts ; 

They are swinging over 

Her and her lover. 

Almost swooning 

Under the ballooning canvas, , 

She lies 

Looking up in his eyes 

As he bends farther over. 

Theodore, still her lover ! 

The suds were dried upon Charlotta's hands. 
She leant against the table for support, 
"Wholly forgotten. Theodore's eyes were brands 
Burning upon his music. He stopped short. 
Charlotta almost heard the sound of bands 
Snapping. She put one hand up to her heart. 
Her fingers touched the locket with a start. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 111 

Herr Altgelt put his violin away 
Listlessly. "Lotta, I must have some rest. 
The strain will be a hideous one to-day. 
Don't speak to me at all. It will be best 
If I am quiet till I go.** And lest 
She disobey, he left her. On the stairs 
She heard his mounting steps. What use were 
prayers ! 

He could not hear, he was not there, for she 
Was married to a mummy, a machine. 
Her hand closed on the locket bitterly. 
Before her, on a chair, lay the shagreen 
Case of his violin. She saw the clean 
Sun flash the open clasp. The locket's edge 
Cut at her fingers like a pushing wedge. 



112 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

A heavy cart went by, a distant bell 

Chimed ten, the fire flickered in the grate. 

She was alone. Her throat began to swell 

With sobs. What kept her here, why should she 

wait? 
The violin she had begun to hate 
Lay in its case before her. Here she flung 
The cover open. With the fiddle swung 

Over her head, the hanging clock's loud ticking 
Caught on her ear. 'Twas slow, and as she paused 
The little door in it came open, flicking 
A wooden cuckoo out : "Cuckoo !'* It caused 
The forest dream to come again. "Cuckoo !" 
Smashed on the grate, the violin broke in two. 

"Cuckoo ! Cuckoo !" the clock kept striking on ; 
But no one Hstened. Frau Altgelt had gone. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 113 



THE CROSS-ROADS 

A BULLET through his heart at dawn. On the 
table a letter signed with a woman's name. A wind 
that goes howling round the house, and weeping as 
in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through 
the windows, cold dawn creeping over the floor, 
creeping up his cold legs, creeping over his cold body, 
creeping across his cold face. A glaze of thin yellow 
sunlight on the staring eyes. Wind howling through 
bent branches. A wind which never dies down. 
Howling, wailing. The gazing eyes glitter in the 
sunlight. The lids are frozen open and the eyes 
glitter. 

The thudding of a pick on hard earth. A spade 
grinding and crunching. Overhead, branches writh- 
ing, winding, interlacing, unwinding, scattering; 
I 



114 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

tortured twinings, tossings, creakings. Wind fling- 
ing branches apart, drawing them together, whisper- 
ing and whining among them. A waning, lobsided 
moon cutting through black clouds. A stream of 
pebbles and earth and the empty spade gleams clear 
in the moonlight, then is rammed again into the 
black earth. Tramping of feet. Men and horses. 
Squeaking of wheels. 

"Whoa! Ready, Jim?" 

"All ready.'* 

Something falls, settles, is still. Suicides have no 
cofl^. 

**Give us the stake, Jim. Now." 

Pound ! Pound ! 

"He'll never walk. Nailed to the ground." 

An ash stick pierces his heart, if it buds the roots 
will hold him. He is a part of the earth now, clay 
to clay. Overhead the branches sway, and writhe, 
and twist in the wind. He'll never walk with a 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 115 

bullet in his heart, and an ash stick nailing him to 
the cold, black ground. 

Six months he lay still. Six months. And the 
water welled up in his body, and soft blue spots 
chequered it. He lay still, for the ash stick held 
him in place. Six months ! Then her face came 
out of a mist of green. Pink and white and frail 
like Dresden china, lilies-of-the-valley at her breast, 
puce-coloured silk sheening about her. Under the 
young green leaves, the horse at a foot-pace, the 
high yellow wheels of the chaise scarcely turning, 
her face, rippling like grain a-blowing, under her 
puce-coloured bonnet ; and burning beside her, flam- 
ing within his correct blue coat and brass buttons, 
is someone. What has dimmed the sun ? The horse 
steps on a rolling stone; a wind in the branches 
makes a moan. The little leaves tremble and shake, 
turn and quake, over and over, tearing their stems. 



116 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

There is a shower of young leaves, and a sudden- 
sprung gale wails in the trees. 

The yellow-wheeled chaise is rocking — rocking, 
and all the branches are knocking — knocking. The 
sun in the sky is a flat, red plate, the branches creak 
and grate. She screams and cowers, for the green 
foliage is a lowering wave surging to smother her. 
But she sees nothing. The stake holds firm. The 
body writhes, the body squirms. The blue spots 
widen, the flesh tears, but the stake wears well in 
the deep, black ground. It holds the body in the 
still, black ground. 

Two years! The body has been in the ground 
two years. It is worn away; it is clay to clay. 
Where the heart moulders, a greenish dust, the stake 
is thrust. Late August it is, and night; a night 
flauntingly jewelled with stars, a night of shooting 
stars and loud insect noises. Down the road to 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 117 

Tilbury, silence — and the slow flapping of large 
leaves. Down the road to Sutton, silence — and 
the darkness of heavy-foliaged trees. Down the 
road to Wayfleet, silence — and the whirring scrape 
of insects in the branches. Down the road to Edgars- 
town, silence — and stars like stepping-stones in 
a pathway overhead. It is very quiet at the cross- 
roads, and the sign-board points the way down the 
four roads, endlessly points the way where nobody 
wishes to go. 

A horse is galloping, galloping up from Sutton. 
Shaking the wide, still leaves as he goes under them. 
Striking sparks with his iron shoes; silencing the 
katydids. Dr. Morgan riding to a child-birth over 
Tilbury way ; riding to deliver a woman of her first- 
born son. One o'clock from Wayfleet bell tower, 
what a shower of shooting stars ! And a breeze all 
of a sudden, jarring the big leaves and making them 
jerk up and down. Dr. Morgan's hat is blown 



118 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

from his head, the horse swerves, and curves away 
from the sign-post. An oath — spurs — a blurring 
of grey mist. A quick left twist, and the gelding is 
snorting and racing down the Tilbury road with the 
wind dropping away behind him. 

The stake has wrenched, the stake has started, the 
body, flesh from flesh, has parted. But the bones 
hold tight, socket and ball, and clamping them down 
in the hard, black ground is the stake, wedged through 
ribs and spine. The bones may twist, and heave, 
and twine, but the stake holds them still in line. 
The breeze goes down, and the round stars shine, for 
the stake holds the fleshless bones in line. 

Twenty years now! Twenty long years! The 
body has powdered itself away; it is clay to clay. 
It is brown earth mingled with brown earth. Only 
flaky bones remain, lain together so long they fit, 
although not one bone is knit to another. The stake 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 110 

is there too, rotted through, but upright still, and still 
piercing down between ribs and spine in a straight 
line. 

Yellow stillness is on the cross-roads, yellow still- 
ness is on the trees. The leaves hang drooping, 
wan. The four roads point four yellow ways, saffron 
and gamboge ribbons to the gaze. A little swirl 
of dust blows up Tilbury road, the wind which fans 
it has not strength to do more; it ceases, and the 
dust settles down. A little whirl of wind comes up 
Tilbury road. It brings a sound of wheels and feet. 
The wind reels a moment and faints to nothing under 
the sign-post. Wind again, wheels and feet louder. 
Wind again — again — again. A drop of rain, flat 
into the dust. Drop ! — Drop ! Thick heavy rain- 
drops, and a shrieking wind bending the great trees 
and wrenching off their leaves. 

Under the black sky, bowed and dripping with 
rain, up Tilbury road, comes the procession. A fu- 



120 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

neral procession, bound for the graveyard at Way- 
fleet. Feet and wheels — feet and wheels. A.nd 
among them one who is carried. 

The bones in the deep, still earth shiver and pull. 
There is a quiver through the rotted stake. Then 
stake and bones fall together in a little puffing of 
dust. 

Like meshes of linked steel the rain shuts down 
behind the procession, now well along the Wayfleet 
road. 

He wavers hke smoke in the buffeting wind. His 
fingers blow out like smoke, his head ripples in the 
gale. Under the sign-post, in the pouring rain, 
he stands, and watches another quavering figure 
drifting down the Wayfleet road. Then swiftly 
he streams after it. It flickers among the trees. 
He licks out and winds about them. Over, under, 
blown, contorted. Spindrift after spindrift; smoke 
following smoke. There is a wailing through the 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 121 

trees, a wailing of fear, and after it laughter — 
laughter — laughter, skirling up to the black sky. 
Lightning jags over the funeral procession. A heavy 
clap of thunder. Then darkness and rain, and the 
sound of feet and wheels. 



122 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



A ROXBURY GARDEN 

I 

Hoops 
Blue and pink sashes. 
Criss-cross shoes, 

Minna and Stella run out into the garden 
To play at hoop. 

Up and down the garden-paths they race. 
In the yellow sunshine. 
Each with a big round hoop 
White as a stripped willow-wand. 

Round and round turn the hoops, 
Their diamond whiteness cleaving the yellow sun- 
shine. 
The gravel crunches and squeaks beneath them. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 123 

And a large pebble springs them into the air 
To go whirling for a foot or two 
Before they touch the earth again 
In a series of little jumps. 

Spring, Hoops ! 

Spit out a shower of blue and white brightness. 
The little criss-cross shoes twinkle behind you. 
The pink and blue sashes flutter lilce flags. 
The hoop-sticks are ready to beat you. 
Turn, turn. Hoops ! In the yellow sunshine. 
Turn your stripped willow whiteness 
Along the smooth paths. 

Stella sings : 

" Round and round, rolls my hoop,; . 
Scarcely touching the ground. 
With a swoop. 
And a bound. 



124 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Round and round. 

With a bumpety, crunching, scattering sound, 

Down the garden it flies ; 

In our eyes 

The sun lies. 

See it spin 

Out and in; 

Through the paths it goes whirling. 

About the beds curling. 

Sway now to the loop. 

Faster, faster, my hoop. 

Roimd you come. 

Up you come. 

Quick and straight as before. 

Run, run, my hoop, run. 

Away from the sun." 

And the great hoop bounds along the path. 
Leaping into the wind-bright air. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 125 



Minna sings : 

"Turn, hoop. 
Burn hoop. 
Twist and twine 
Hoop of mine. 
Flash along. 
Leap along. 
Right at the sun. 
Run, hoop, run. 
Faster and faster. 
Whirl, twirl. 
Wheel like fire. 
And spin like glass ; 
Fire's no whiter 
Glass is no brighter. 
Dance, 
Prance, 
Over and over. 



126 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

About and about. 

With the top of you under. 

And the bottom at top. 

But never a stop. 

Turn about, hoop, to the tap of my stick, 

I follow behind you 

To touch and remind you. 

Burn and glitter, so white and quick. 

Round and round, to the tap of a stick." 

The hoop flies along between the flower-beds. 
Swaying the flowers with the wind of its passing. 

Beside the foxglove-border roll the hoops. 
And the little pink and white bells shake and jingle 
Up and down their tall spires ; 
They roll under the snow-ball bush. 
And the ground behind them is strewn with white 
petals ; 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 127 

They swirl round a corner. 

And jar a bee out of a Canterbury bell ; 

They cast their shadows for an instant 

Over a bed of pansies. 

Catch against the spurs of a columbine. 

Jostle the quietness from a cluster of monk's-hood. 

Pat! Pat! behind them come the little criss-cross 

shoes. 
And the blue and pink sashes stream out in flappings 

of colour. 

Stella sings : 

"Hoop, hoop. 
Roll along. 
Faster bowl along. 
Hoop. 

Slow, to the turning. 
Now go ! — Go ! 
Quick! 



128 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Here's the stick. 

Rat-a-tap-tap it, 

Pat it, flap it. 

Fly like a bird or a yellow-backed bee. 

See how soon you can reach that tree. 

Here is a path that is perfectly straight. 

Roll along, hoop, or we shall be late." " 

Minna sings : 

"Trip about, slip about, whip about 
Hoop. 

Wheel like a top at its quickest spin. 
Then, dear hoop, we shall surely win. 
First to the greenhouse and then to the wall 
Circle and circle. 
And let the wind push you. 
Poke you. 
Brush you. 
And not let you fall. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 129 

Whirring you round like a wreath of mist. 

Hoopety hoop, 

Twist, 

Twist." 

Tap ! Tap ! go the hoop-sticks, 

And the hoops bowl along under a grape arbour. 

For an instant their willow whiteness is green, 

Pale white-green. 

Then they are out in the sunshine. 

Leaving the half-formed grape clusters 

A-tremble under their big leaves. 

**I will beat you, Minna," cries Stella,'^ 
Hitting her hoop smartly with her stick. 
"Stella, Stella, we are winning," calls Minna, 
As her hoop curves round a bed of clove-pinks. 
A humming-bird whizzes past Stella's ear. 
And two or three yellow-and-black butterflies 
Flutter, startled, out of a pillar rose. 



130 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Round and round race the little girls 
After their great white hoops. 

Suddenly Minna stops. 

Her hoop wavers an instant. 

But she catches it up on her stick. 

"Listen, Stella!" 

Both the little girls are listening ; 

And the scents of the garden rise up quietly about 

them. 
*' It's the chaise ! It's Father ! 
Perhaps he's brougnt'us a book from Boston.'* 
Twinkle, twinkle, the little criss-cross shoes 
Up the garden path. 

Blue — pink — an instant, against the syringa hedge. 
But the hoops, white as stripped willow-wands. 
Lie in the grass. 

And the grasshoppers jump back and forth 
Over them. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 131 

II 

Battledore and Shuttlecock 
The shuttlecock soars upward 
In a parabola of whiteness. 
Turns, 

And sinks to a perfect arc. 
Plat ! the battledore strikes it. 
And it rises again. 
Without haste. 
Winged and curving. 
Tracing its white flight 
Against the clipped hemlock-trees. 
Plat! 
Up again. 

Orange and sparkling with sun. 
Rounding under the blue sky. 
Dropping, 

Fading to grey-green 
In the shadow of the coned hemlocks. 



132 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

"Ninety-one." "Ninety-two." "Ninety-three.' 

The arms of the little girls 

Come up — and up — 

Precisely, 

Like mechanical toys. 

The battledores beat at nothing, \j 

And toss the dazzle of snow 

Off their parchment drums. 

"Ninety-four." Plat! 

"Ninety-five." Plat! 

Back and forth 

Goes the shuttlecock. 

Icicle-white, 

Leaping at the sharp-edged clouds, 

Overturning, 

Falling, 

Down, 

And down. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 133 

Tinctured with pink 
From the upthrusting shine 
Of Oriental poppies. 

The little girls sway to the counting rhythm; 
Left foot. 
Right foot. 
Plat! Plat! 

Yellow heat twines round the handles of the battle- 
dores. 
The parchment cracks with dryness ; 
But the shuttlecock 
Swings slowly into the ice-blue sky. 
Heaving up on the warm air 
Like a foam-bubble on a wave. 
With feathers slanted and sustaining. 
Higher, 

Until the earth turns beneath it ; 
Poised and swinging. 



134 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

With all the garden flowing beneath it. 

Scarlet, and blue, and purple, and white — 

Blurred colour reflections in rippled water — 

Changing — streaming — 

For the moment that Stella takes to lift her arm. 

Then the shuttlecock relinquishes. 

Bows, 

Descends ; 

And the sharp blue spears of the air 

Thrust it to earth. 

Again it mounts. 

Stepping up on the rising scents of flowers. 

Buoyed up and under by the shining heat. 

Above the foxgloves. 

Above the guelder-roses. 

Above the greenhouse glitter. 

Till the shafts of cooler air 

Meet it. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 1S5 

Deflect it. 

Reject it. 

Then down, 

Down, 

Past the greenhouse. 

Past the guelder-rose bush. 

Past the foxgloves. 

"Ninety-nine," Stella's battledore springs to the 

impact. 
Plunk ! Like the snap of a taut string. 
*'0h! Mmna!" 

The shuttlecock drops zigzagedly. 
Out of orbit. 
Hits the path. 
And rolls over quite still. 
Dead white feathers. 
With a weight at the end. 



136 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

III 

Garden Games 
The tall clock is striking twelve ; 
And the little girls stop in the hall to watch it. 
And the big ships rocking in a half -circle 
Above the dial. 
Twelve o'clock ! 
Down the side steps 
Go the little girls. 
Under their big round straw hats. 
Minna's has a pink ribbon, 
Stella's a blue. 

That is the way they know which is which. 
Twelve o'clock ! 
An hour yet before dinner. 
Mother is busy in the still-room. 
And Hannah is making gingerbread. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 137 

Slowly, with lagging steps. 

They follow the garden-path. 

Crushing a leaf of box for its acrid smell, 

Discussing what they shall do. 

And doing nothing. 

"Stella, see that grasshopper 
Climbing up the bank ! 
What a jump ! 
Almost as long as my arm." 
Run, children, run. 
For the grasshopper is leaping away. 
In half-circle curves. 
Shuttlecock curves, ^ 
Over the grasses. 

Hand in hand, the little girls call to him : 
" Grandfather, grandfather gray, 
Give me molasses, or I'll throw you away." 



138 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The grasshopper leaps into the sunlight. 

Golden-green, 

And is gone. 

** Let's catch a bee." 

Round whirl the little girls. 

And up the garden. 

Two heads are thrust among the Canterbury bells. 

Listening, 

And fingers clasp and unclasp behind backs 

In a strain of silence. 

White bells. 

Blue bells. 

Hollow and reflexed. 

Deep tunnels of blue and white dimness. 

Cool wine-tunnels for bees. 

There is a floundering and buzzing over Minna's head. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 139 

"Bend it down, Stella. Quick! Quick!" 

The wide mouth of a blossom 

Is pressed together in Minna's fingers. 

The stem flies up, jiggling its flower-bells. 

And Minna holds the dark blue cup in her hand. 

With the bee 

Imprisoned in it. 

Whirr ! Buzz ! Bump ! 

Bump ! Whiz ! Bang ! 

BANG!! 

The blue flower tears across like paper. 

And a gold-black bee darts away in the sunshine, 

**If we could fly, we could catch him." 

The sunshine is hot on Stella's upturned face. 

As she stares after the bee. 

"We'll follow him in a dove chariot. 

Come on, Stella.'* 

Run, children. 



140 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Along the red gravel paths. 
For a bee is hard to catch. 
Even with a chariot of doves. 

Tall, still, and cowled. 

Stand the monk's-hoods ; 

Taller than the heads of the little girls. 

A blossom for Minna. 

A blossom for Stella. 

Off comes the cowl, 

And there is a purple-painted chariot ; 

Off comes the forward petal. 

And there are two little green doves. 

With green traces tying them to the chariot. 

**Now we will get in, and fly right up to the clouds. 

Fly, Doves, up in the sky. 

With Minna and me. 

After the bee.'* 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 141 

Up one path, 

Down another, 

Run the little girls, 

Holding their dove chariots in front of them ; 

But the bee is hidden in the trumpet of a honeysuckle* 

"With his wings folded along his back. 

The dove chariots are thrown away. 

And the little girls wander slowly through the garden. 

Sucking the salvia tips. 

And squeezing the snapdragons 

To make them gape. 

"I*m so hot. 

Let's pick a pansy 

And see the little man in his bath, 

And play we're he.'* 

A royal bath-tub, 

Hung with purple stuffs and yellow. 



142 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The great purple-yellow wings 

Rise up behind the little red and green man; 

The purple-yellow wings fan him. 

He dabbles his feet in cool green. 

Off with the green sheath, 

And there are two spindly legs. 

"Heigho!" sighs Minna. 

"Heigho!" sighs SteUa. 

There is not a flutter of wind. 

And the sun is directly overhead. 

Along the edge of the garden 

Walk the little girls. 

Their hats, round and yellow like cheeses. 

Are dangling by the ribbons. 

The grass is a tumult of buttercups and daisies; 

Buttercups and daisies streaming away 

Up the hill. 

The garden is purple, and pink, and orange, and scarlet ; 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 143 

The garden is hot with colours. 

But the meadow is only yellow, and white, and green. 

Cool, and long, and quiet. 

The httle girls pick buttercups 

And hold them under each other's chins. 

"You're as gold as Grandfather's snuff-box. 

You're going to be very rich, Minna." 

**0h-o-o! Then I'll ask my husband to give me a 

pair of garnet earrings 
Just like Aunt Nancy's. 
I wonder if he will. 
I know. We'll tell fortunes. 
That's what we'll do." 
Plump down in the meadow grass, 
Stella and Minna, 
With their round yellow hats. 
Like cheeses. 
Beside them. 
Drop, 



144 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Drop, 

Daisy petals. 
"One I love. 
Two I love. 

Three I love I say . . .*' 
The ground is peppered with daisy petals. 
And the little girls nibble the golden centres, 
And play it is cake. 

A bell rings. 

Dinner-time ; 

And after dinner there are lessons. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 145 



1777 

I 

The Trumpet- Vine Arbour 

The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are wide 
open. 

And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sun- 
light. 

They bray and blare at the burning sky. 

Red ! Red ! Coarse notes of red. 

Trumpeted at the blue sky. 

In long streaks of sound, molten metal. 

The vine declares itself. 

Clang ! — from its red and yellow trumpets. 

Clang ! — from its long, nasal trumpets, 

Sphtting the sunlight into ribbons, tattered and shot 
with noise. 



146 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

I sit in the cool arbour, in a green-and-gold twilight. 

It is very still, for I cannot hear the trumpets, 

I only know that they are red and open. 

And that the sun above the arbour shakes with heat. 

My quill is newly mended. 

And makes fine-drawn lines with its point. 

Down the long, white paper it makes little lines. 

Just lines — up — down — criss-cross. 

My heart is strained out at the pin-point of my quill ; 

It is thin and writhing like the marks of the pen. 

My hand marches to a squeaky tune. 

It marches down the paper to a squealing of fifes. 

My pen and the trumpet-flowers. 

And Washington's armies away over the smoke-tree 

to the Southwest. 
"Yankee Doodle," my Darling! It is you against 

the British, 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 147 

Marching in your ragged shoes to batter down King 

George. 
What have you got in your hat? Not a feather, I 

wager. 
Just a hay-straw, for it is the harvest you are fighting 

for. 
Hay in your hat, and the whites of their eyes for a 

target ! 
Like Bunker Hill, two years ago, when I watched 

all day from the house-top 
Through Father's spy-glass. 
The red city, and the blue, bright water. 
And puffs of smoke which you made. 
Twenty miles away. 

Round by Cambridge, or over the Neck, 
But the smoke was white — white ! 
To-day the trumpet-flowers are red — red — 
And I cannot see you fighting. 
But old Mr. Dimond has fled to Canada, 
And Myra sings "Yankee Doodle" at her milking. 



148 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The red throats of the trumpets bray and clang in 

the sunshine. 
And the smoke-tree pufis dun blossoms into the blue 

air. 

n 

The City of Falling Leaves 
Leaves fall. 
Brown leaves. 

Yellow leaves streaked with brown. 
They fall. 
Flutter, 
Fall again. 
The brown leaves. 
And the streaked yellow leaves. 
Loosen on their branches 
And drift slowly downwards. 
One, 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 149 

One, two, three. 

One, two, five. 

All Venice is a falling of Autumn leaves — 

Brown, 

And yellow streaked with brown. 

"That sonnet. Abate, 
Beautiful, 

I am quite exhausted by it. 
Your phrases turn about my heart 
And stifle me to swooning. 
Open the window, I beg. 

Lord ! What a strumming of fiddles and mandolins ! 
'Tis really a shame to stop indoors. 
Call my maid, or I will make you lace me yourself. 
Fie, how hot it is, not a breath of air ! 
See how straight the leaves are falling. 
Marianna, I will have the yellow satin caught up 
with silver fringe. 



150 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

It peeps out delightfully from under a mantle. 

Am I well painted to-day, cam Abate mio ? 

You will be proud of me at the Ridotto, hey? 

Proud of being Cavalier Servente to such a lady?'* 

"Can you doubt it, Bellissima Contessa? 

A pinch more rouge on the right cheek. 

And Venus herself shines less ..." 

"You bore me. Abate, 

I vow I must change you ! 

A letter, Achmet? 

Run and look out of the window. Abate. 

I will read my letter in peace." 

The little black slave with the yellow satin turban 

Gazes at his mistress with strained eyes. 

His yellow turban and black skin 

Are gorgeous — barbaric. 

The yellow satin dress with its silver flashings 

Lies on a chair 

Beside a black mantle and a black mask. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 151 

Yellow and black. 

Gorgeous — barbaric. 

The lady reads her letter. 

And the leaves drift slowly 

Past the long windows. 

"How silly you look, my dear Ahate,y 

With that great brown leaf in your wig. 

Pluck it off, I beg you. 

Or I shall die of laughing." 

A yellow wall 

Aflare in the sunlight. 

Chequered with shadows. 

Shadows of vine leaves. 

Shadows of masks. 

Masks coming, printing themselves for an instant, 

Then passing on. 

More masks always replacing them. 

Masks with tricorns and rapiers sticking out behind 



152 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Pursuing masks with plumes and high heels. 

The sunlight shining under their insteps. 

One, 

One, two. 

One, two, three. 

There is a thronging of shadows on the hot wall, 

Filigreed at the top with moving leaves. 

Yellow sunlight and black shadows. 

Yellow and black. 

Gorgeous — barbaric. 

Two masks stand together. 

And the shadow of a leaf falls through them. 

Marking the wall where they are not. 

From hat-tip to shoulder-tip. 

From elbow to sword-hilt. 

The leaf falls. 

The shadows mingle. 

Blur together. 

Slide along the wall and disappear. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 153 

Gold of mosaics and candles. 

And night blackness lurking in the ceiling beams. 

Saint Mark's glitters with flames and reflections. 

A cloak brushes aside. 

And the yellow of satin 

Licks out over the coloured inlays of the pavement. 

Under the gold crucifixes 

There is a meeting of hands 

Reaching from black mantles. 

Sighing embraces, bold investigations. 

Hide in confessionals. 

Sheltered by the shuffling of feet. 

Gorgeous — barbaric 

In its mail of jewels and gold, 

Saint Mark's lool^ down at the swarm of black masks ; 

And outside in the palace gardens brown leaves fall,, 

Flutter, 

Fall. 



154 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS ' 

Brown, 

And yellow streaked with brown. 

Blue-black, the sky over Venice, 

With a pricking of yellow stars. 

There is no moon. 

And the waves push darkly against the prow 

Of the gondola. 

Coming from Malamocco 

And streaming toward Venice. 

It is black under the gondola hood, 

But the yellow of a satin dress 

Glares out like the eye of a watching tiger. 

Yellow compassed about with darkness. 

Yellow and black. 

Gorgeous — barbaric. 

The boatman sings. 

It is Tasso that he sings; 

The lovers seek each other beneath their mantles. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 155 

And tlie gondola drifts over the lagoon, aslant to 

the coming dawn. 
But at Malamocco in front. 
In Venice behind. 
Fall the leaves. 
Brown, 

And yellow streaked with brown. 
They faU, 
Flutter, 
Fall. 



BRONZE TABLETS 



THE FRUIT SHOP, 

Cross-ribboned shoes ; a muslin gown, 

High-waisted, girdled with bright blue ; 

A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown 

She pluekered her little brows into 

As she picked her dainty passage through 

The dusty street. *'Ah, Mademoiselle, 

A dirty pathway, we need rain. 

My poor fruits suffer, and the shell 

Of this nut's too big for its kernel, lain 

Here in the sun it has shrunk again. 

The baker down at the corner says 

We need a battle to shake the clouds ; 

But I am a man of peace, my ways 

Don't look to the killing of men in crowds. 

Poor fellows with guns and bayonets for shrouds ! 

Pray, Mademoiselle, come out of the sun. 



160 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Let me dust off that wicker chair. It's cool 

In here, for the green leaves I have run 

In a curtain over the door, make a pool 

Of shade. You see the pears on that stool — 

The shadow keeps them plump and fair," 

Over the fruiterer's door, the leaves 

Held back the sun, a greenish flare 

Quivered and sparked the shop, the sheaves 

Of sunbeams, glanced from the sign on the eaves. 

Shot from the golden letters, broke 

And splintered to little scattered lights. 

Jeanne Tourmont entered the shop, her poke 

Bonnet tilted itself to rights. 

And her face looked out like the moon on nights 

Of flickering clouds. "Monsieur Popain, I 

Want gooseberries, an apple or two. 

Or excellent plums, but not if they're high ; 

Haven't you some which a strong wind blew ? 

I've only a couple of francs for you." 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 1 161 

Monsieur Popain shrugged and rubbed his hands. 

What could he do, the times were sad. 

A couple of francs and such demands ! 

And asking for fruits a little bad. 

Wind-blown indeed ! He never had 

Anything else than the very best. 

He pointed to baskets of blunted pears 

With the thin skin tight Hke a bursting vest. 

All yellow, and red, and brown, in smears. 

Monsieur Popain's voice denoted tears. 

He took up a pear with tender care. 

And pressed it with his hardened thumb. 

"Smell it. Mademoiselle, the perfume there 

Is like lavender, and sweet thoughts come 

Only from having a dish at home. 

And those grapes ! They melt in the mouth like 

wine, 
Just a click of the tongue, and they burst to honey. 
They're only this morning oflf the vine, 

M 



162 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And I paid for them down in silver money. 

The Corporal's widow is witness, her pony 

Brought them in at sunrise to-day. 

Those oranges — Gold ! They're almost red. 

They seem little chips just broken away 

From the sun itself. Or perhaps instead 

You'd like a pomegranate, they're rarely gay, 

When you split them the seeds are like crimson 

spray. 
Yes, they're high, they're high, and those Turkey 

figs. 
They all come from the South, and Nelson's ships 
Make it a little hard for our rigs. 
They must be forever giving the slips 
To the cursed English, and when men clips 
Through powder to bring them, why dainties mounts 
A bit in price. Those almonds now, 
I'll strip off that husk, when one discounts 
A life or two in a nigger row 



' MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS ' 163 

With the man who grew them, it does seem how 
They would come dear ; and then the fight 
At sea perhaps, our boats have heels 
And mostly they sail along at night. 
But once in a way they're caught ; one feels 
Ivory's not better nor finer — why peels 
From an almond kernel are worth two sous. 
It's hard to sell them now," he sighed. 
"Purses are tight, but I shall not lose. 
There's plenty of cheaper things to choose." 
He picked some cmrants out of a wide 
Earthen bowl. "They make the tongue 
Almost fly out to suck them, bride 
Currants they are, they were planted long 
Ago for some new Marquise, among 
Other great beauties, before the Chateau 
Was left to rot. Now the Gardener's wife. 
He that marched off to his death at Marengo, 
Sells them to me ; she keeps her life 



164 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

From snuffing out, with her pruning knife. 

She's a poor old thing, but she learnt the trade 

When her man was young, and the young Marquis 

Couldn't have enough garden. The flowers he made 

All new ! And the fruits ! But 'twas said that he 

Was no friend to the people, and so they laid 

Some charge against him, a cavalcade 

Of citizens took him away ; they meant 

Well, but I think there was some mistake. 

He just pottered round in his garden, bent 

On growing things ; we were so awake 

In those days for the New Republic's sake. 

He's gone, and the garden is all that's left 

Not in ruin, but the currants and apricots. 

And peaches, furred and sweet, with a cleft 

Full of morning dew, in those green-glazed pots, 

Why, Mademoiselle, there is never an eft 

Or worm among them, and as for theft. 

How the old woman keeps them I cannot say. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 165 

But they're finer than any grown this way.'* 

Jeanne Tourmont drew back the filigree ring 

Of her striped silk purse, tipped it upside down 

And shook it, two coins fell with a ding 

Of striking silver, beneath her gown 

One rolled, the other lay, a thing 

Sparked white and sharply glistening. 

In a drop of sunlight between two shades. 

She jerked the purse, took its empty ends 

And crumpled them toward the centre braids. 

The whole collapsed to a mass of blends 

Of colours and stripes. "Monsieur Popain, friends 

We have always been. In the days before 

The Great Revolution my aunt was kind 

When you needed help. You need no more ; 

'Tis we now who must beg at your door. 

And will you refuse ?'* The little man 

Bustled, denied, his heart was good. 

But times were hard. He went to a pan 



166 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And poured upon the counter a flood 
Of pungent raspberries, tanged like wood. 
He took a melon with rough green rind 
And rubbed it well with his apron tip. 
Then he hunted over the shop to find , 
Some walnuts cracking at the lip. 
And added to these a barberry slip 
Whose acrid, oval berries hung 
Like fringe and trembled. He reached a round 
Basket, with handles, from where it swung 
Against the wall, laid it on the ground 
And filled it, then he searched and found 
The francs Jeanne Tourmont had let fall. 
"You'll return the basket. Mademoiselle?'* 
She smiled, "The next time that I call. 
Monsieur. You know that very well." 
'Twas lightly said, but meant to tell. 
Monsieur Popain bowed, somewhat abashed. 
She took her basket and stepped out. 
The sunlight was so bright it flashed 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 167 

Her eyes to blindness, and the rout 

Of the little street was all about. 

Through glare and noise she stumbled, dazed. 

The heavy basket was a care. 

She heard a shout and almost grazed 

The panels of a chaise and pair. 

The postboy yelled, and an amazed 

Face from the carriage window gazed. 

She jumped back just in time, her heart 

Beating with fear. Through whirling light 

The chaise departed, but her smart 

Was keen and bitter. In the white 

Dust of the street she saw a bright ' 

Streak of colours, wet and gay, 

Red like blood. Crushed but fair. 

Her fruit stained the cobbles of the way. 

Monsieur Popain joined her there. 

"Tiens, Mademoiselle, 

c'est le General Bonaparte, partant pour 
la Guerre!" a 



168 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



MALMAISON 

I 

How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun, over 
there, over there, beyond the high wall ! How 
quietly the Seine runs in loops and windings, over 
there, over there, sliding through the green country- 
side! Like ships of the line, stately with canvas, 
the tall clouds pass along the sky, over the glittering 
roof, over the trees, over the looped and curving 
river. A breeze quivers through the linden-trees. 
Roses bloom at Malmaison. Roses! Roses! But 
the road is dusty. Already the Citoyenne Beau- 
harnais wearies of her walk. Her skin is chalked 
and powdered with dust, she smells dust, and behind 
the wall are roses ! Roses with smooth open petals, 
poised above rippling leaves . . . Roses . . . They 
have told her so. The Citoyenne Beauharnais shrugs 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 169 

her shoulders and makes a little face. She must 
mend her pace if she would be back in time for 
dinner. Roses indeed! The guillotine more likely. 

The tiered clouds float over Malmaison, and the 
slate roof sparkles in the sun. 

II 

Gallop ! Gallop ! The General brooks no delay. 
Make way, good people, and scatter out of his path, 
you, and your hens, and your dogs, and your children. 
The General is returned from Egypt, and is come in 
a caleche and four to visit his new property. Throw 
open the gates, you. Porter of Malmaison. Pull 
oflp your cap, my man, this is your master, the hus- 
band of Madame. Faster! Faster! A jerk and 
a jingle and they are arrived, he and she. Madame 
has red eyes. Fie! It is for joy at her husband's 
return. Learn your place. Porter. A gentleman here 



170 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

for two months ? Fie ! Fie, then ! Since when have 
you taken to gossiping. Madame may have a brother, 
I suppose. That — all green, and red, and glitter, 
with flesh as dark as ebony — that is a slave ; a blood- 
thirsty, stabbing, slashing heathen, come from the hot 
countries to cure your tongue of idle whispering. 

A fine afternoon it is, with tall bright clouds sail- 
ing over the trees. 

** Bonaparte, mon amiy the trees are golden like 
my star, the star I pinned to your destiny when I 
married you. The gypsy, you remember her proph- 
ecy! My dear friend, not here, the servants are 
watching ; send them away, and that flashing splen- 
dour, Roustan. Superb — Imperial, but . . . My 
dear, your arm is trembling ; I faint to feel it touching 
me ! No, no, Bonaparte, not that — spare me that 
— did we not bury that last night ! You hurt me, 
my friend, you are so hot and strong. Not long. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 171 

Dear, no, thank God, not long.** 

The looped river runs saffron, for the sun is setting. 
It is getting dark. Dark. Darker. In the moon- 
light, the slate roof shines palely milkily white. 

The roses have faded at Malmaison, nipped by 
the frost. What need for roses .'^ Smooth, open 
petals — her arms. Fragrant, outcurved petals — 
her breasts. He rises like a sun above her, stooping 
to touch the petals, press them wider. Eagles. 
Bees. What are they to open roses ! A little shiver- 
ing breeze runs through the linden-trees, and the 
tiered clouds blow across the sky like ships of the 
line, stately with canvas. 

m 

The gates stand wide at Malmaison, stand wide 
all day. The gravel of the avenue glints under the 
continual rolling of wheels. An officer gallops up 
with his sabre clicking; a mameluke gallops down 
with his charger kicking. Valets de jded run about 



172 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

in ones, and twos, and groups, like swirled blown 
leaves. Tramp ! Tramp ! The guard is changing, 
and the grenadiers off duty lounge out of sight, 
ranging along the roads toward Paris. 

The slate roof sparkles in the sun, but it sparkles 
milkily, vaguely, the great glass-houses put out its 
shining. Glass, stone, and onjoc now for the sun's 
mirror. Much has come to pass at Malmaison. 
New rocks and fountains, blocks of carven marble, 
fluted pillars uprearing antique temples, vases and 
urns in unexpected places, bridges of stone, bridges 
of wood, arbours and statues, and a flood of flowers 
everywhere, new flowers, rare flowers, parterre after 
parterre of flowers. Indeed, the roses bloom at 
Malmaison. It is youth, youth untrammeled and 
advancing, trundling a country ahead of it as though 
it were a hoop. Laughter, and spur janglings in 
tessellated vestibules. Tripping of clocked and em- 
broidered stockings in little low-heeled shoes over 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 173 

smooth grass-plots. India muslins spangled with 
silver patterns slide through trees — mingle — sepa- 
rate — white day fireflies flashing moon-brilliance in 
the shade of foliage. 

"The kangaroos ! I vow. Captain, I must see the 
kangaroos." 

**As you please, dear Lady, but I recommend the 
shady linden alley and feeding the cockatoos." 

"They say that Madame Bonaparte's breed of 
sheep is the best in all France." 

"And, oh, have you see the enchanting little cedar 
she planted when the First Consul sent home the 
news of the victory of Marengo?" 

Picking, choosing, the chattering company flits to 
and fro. Over the trees the great clouds go, tiered, 
stately, like ships of the line bright with canvas. 

Prisoners'-base, and its swooping, veering, racing, 
giggling, bumping. The First Consul runs plump 
into M. de Beauharnais and falls. But he picks 



174 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

himself up smartly, and starts after M. Isabey. Too 
late, M. Le Premier Consul, Mademoiselle Hortense is 
out after you. Quickly, my dear Sir ! Stir your short 
legs, she is swift and eager, and as graceful as 
her mother. She is there, that other, playing too, 
but lightly, warily, bearing herself with care, rather 
floating out upon the air than running, never far 
from goal. She is there, borne up above her guests 
as something indefinably fair, a rose above peri' 
winkles. A blown rose, smooth as satin, reflexed, 
one loosened petal hanging back and down. A rose 
that undulates languorously as the breeze takes it, 
resting upon its leaves in a faintness of perfume. 

There are rumours about the First Consul. Mal- 
maison is full of women, and Paris is only two leagues 
distant. Madame Bonaparte stands on the wooden 
bridge at sunset, and watches a black swan pushing 
the pink and silver water in front of him as he swims, 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 175 

crinkling its smoothness into pleats of changing colour 
with his breast. Madame Bonaparte presses against 
the parapet of the bridge, and the crushed roses at 
her belt melt, petal by petal, into the pink water, 

IV 

A VILE day, Porter. But keep your wits about 
you. The Empress will soon be here. Queer, with- 
out the Emperor ! It is indeed, but best not consider 
that. Scratch your head and prick up your ears. 
Divorce is not for you to debate about. She is late ? 
Ah, well, the roads are muddy. The rain spears 
are as sharp as whetted knives. They dart down 
and down, edged and shining. Clop-trop! Clop- 
trop! A carriage grows out of the mist. Hist, 
Porter. You can keep on your hat. It is only Her 
Majesty's dogs and her parrot. Clop-trop ! The 
Ladies in Waiting, Porter. Clop-trop! It is Her 
Majesty. At least, I suppose it is, but the blinds 
are drawn. 



176 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

"In all the years I have served Her Majesty she 
never before passed the gate without giving me a 
smile ! " 

You're a droll fellow, to expect the Empress to 
put out her head in the pouring rain and salute you. 
She has affairs of her own to think about. 

Clang the gate, no need for further waiting, nobody 
else will be coming to Malmaison to-night. 

White under her veil, drained and shaking, the 
woman crosses the antechamber. Empress ! Em- 
press! Foolish splendour, perished to dust. Ashes 
of roses, ashes of youth. Empress forsooth ! 

Over the glass domes of the hot-houses drenches 
the rain. Behind her a clock ticks — ticks again. 
The sound knocks upon her thought with the echoing 
shudder of hollow vases. She places her hands on 
her ears, but the minutes pass, knocking. Tears in 
Malmaison. And years to come each knocking by. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 177 

minute after minute. Years, many years, and tears, 
and cold pouring rain. 

"I feel as though I had died, and the only sensa- 
tion I have is that I am no more." 

Rain ! Heavy, thudding rain ! 

V 

The roses bloom at Malmaison. And not only 
roses. Tulips, myrtles, geraniums, camelias, rhodo- 
dendrons, dahlias, double hyacinths. All the year 
through, under glass, under the sky, flowers bud, 
expand, die, and give way to others, always others. 
From distant countries they have been brought, and 
taught to live in the cool temperateness of France. 
There is the Bonapartea from Peru; the Napoleone 
Imperiale; the Josephinia Imperatrix, a pearl-white 
flower, purple-shadowed, the calix pricked out with 
crimson points. Malmaison wears its flowers as 
a lady wears her gems, flauntingly, assertively. Mal- 
maison decks herself to hide the hollow within. 



178 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The glass-houses grow and grow, and every year 
fling up hotter reflections to the sailing sun. 

The cost runs into millions, but a woman must 
have something to console herself for a broken heart. 
One can play backgammon and patience, and then 
patience and backgammon, and stake gold napoleons 
on each game won. Sport truly! It is an unruly 
spirit which could ask better. With her jewels, 
her laces, her shawls; her two hundred and twenty 
dresses, her fichus, her veils ; her pictures, her busts, 
her birds. It is absurd that she cannot be happy. 
The Emperor smarts under the thought of her ingrati- 
tude. What could he do more ? And yet she spends, 
spends as never before. It is ridiculous. Can she 
not enjoy life at a smaller figure ? Was ever monarch 
plagued with so extravagant an ex-wife. She owes 
her chocolate-merchant, her candle-merchant, her 
sweetmeat purveyor; her grocer, her butcher, her 
poulterer ; her architect, and the shopkeeper who sells 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 179 

her rouge ; her perfumer, her dressmaker, her merchant 
of shoes. She owes for fans, plants, engravings, and 
chairs. She owes masons and carpenters, vintners, 
lingeres. The lady's affairs are in sad confusion. 

And why ? Why ? 

Can a river flow when the spring is dry ? 

Night. The Empress sits alone, and the clock 
ticks, one after one. The clock nicks off the edges 
of her life. She is chipped like an old bit of china; 
she is frayed like a garment of last year's wearing. 
She is soft, crinkled, like a fading rose. And each 
minute flows by brushing against her, shearing off 
another and another petal. The Empress crushes 
her breasts with her hands and weeps. And the 
tall clouds sail over Malmaison like a procession of 
stately ships bound for the moon. 

Scarlet, clear-blue, purple epauletted with gold. 



180 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

It is a parade of soldiers sweeping up the avenue. 
Eight horses, eight Imperial harnesses, four capari- 
soned postilions, a carriage with the Emperor's 
arms on the panels. Ho, Porter, pop out your eyes, 
and no wonder. Where else imder the Heavens 
could you see such splendour ! 

They sit on a stone seat. The little man in the 
green coat of a Colonel of Chasseurs, and the lady, 
beautiful as a satin seed-pod, and as pale. The 
house has memories. The satin seed-pod holds 
his germs of Empire. We will stay here, under 
the blue sky and the turreted white clouds. She 
draws him; he feels her faded loveliness urge him 
to replenish it. Her soft transparent texture woos 
his nervous fingering. He speaks to her of debts, 
of resignation ; of her children, and his ; he promises 
that she shall see the King of Rome; he says some 
harsh things and some pleasant. But she is there, 
close to him, rose toned to amber, white shot with 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 181 

violet, pungent to his nostrils as embalmed rose- 
leaves in a twilit room. 

Suddenly the Emperor calls his carriage and rolls 
away across the looping Seine. 

VI 

Crystal-blue brightness over the glass-houses. 
Crystal-blue streaks and ripples over the lake. A 
macaw on a gilded perch screams; they have for- 
gotten to take out his dinner. The windows shake. 
Boom! Boom! It is the rumbling of Prussian 
cannon beyond Pecq. Roses bloom at Malmaison. 
Roses! Roses! Swimming above their leaves, rot- 
ting beneath them. Fallen flowers strew the unraked 
walks. Fallen flowers for a fallen Emperor! The 
General in charge of him draws back and watches. 
Snatches of music — snarling, sneering music of 
bagpipes. They say a Scotch regiment is besieging 
Saint-Denis. The Emperor wipes his face, or is 



182 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

it his eyes. His tired eyes which see nowhere the 
grace they long for. Josephine ! Somebody asks 
him a question, he does not answer, somebody else 
does that. There are voices, but one voice he does 
not hear, and yet he hears it all the time. Josephine ! 
The Emperor puts up his hand to screen his face. 
The white light of a bright cloud spears sharply 
through the linden-trees. Vive VEmpereur! There 
are troops passing beyond the wall, troops which 
sing and call. Boom ! A pink rose is jarred off its 
stem and falls at the Emperor's feet. 

"Very well. I go." Where! Does it matter? 

There is no sword to clatter. Nothing but soft 

brushing gravel and a gate which shuts with a click. 

"Quick, fellow, don't spare your horses." 

A whip cracks, wheels turn, why burn one's eyes 

following a fleck of dust. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 183 

VII 

Over the slate roof tall clouds, like ships of the 
line, pass along the sky. The glass-houses glitter 
splotchily, for many of their lights are broken. Roses 
bloom, fiery cinders quenching under damp weeds. 
Wreckage and misery, and a trailing of petty deeds 
smearing over old recollections. 

The musty rooms are empty and their shutters 
are closed, only in the gallery there is a stuffed black 
swan, covered with dust. When you touch it, the 
feathers come off and float softly to the ground. 
Through a chink in the shutters, one can see the 
stately clouds crossing the sky toward the Roman 
arches of the Marly Aqueduct. 



184 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



THE HAMMERS 

I 

Frindsbury, Kent, 1786 
Bang! 

Bang! 

Tap! 

Tap-a-tap ! Rap ! 

All through the lead and silver Winter days. 

All through the copper of Autumn hazes. 

Tap to the red rising sun, 

Tap to the purple setting sun. 

Four years pass before the job is done. 

Two thousand oak trees grown and felled. 

Two thousand oaks from the hedgerows of the Weald, 

Sussex has yielded two thousand oaks 

With huge boles 

Round which the tape rolls 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 185 

Thirty mortal feet, say the village folks. 

Two hundred loads of elm and Scottish fir ; 

Planking from Dantzig. 

My ! What timber goes into a ship ! 

Tap! Tap! 

Two years they have seasoned her ribs on the ways, 

Tapping, tapping. 

You can hear, though there's nothing where you 

gaze. 
Through the fog down the reaches of the river. 
The tapping goes on like heart-beats in a fever. 
The church-bells chime 
Hours and hours. 
Dropping days in showers. 
Bang ! Rap ! Tap ! 
Go the hammers all the time. 
They have planked up her timbers 
And the nails are driven to the head ; 
They have decked her over. 



186 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And again, and again. 

The shoring-up beams shudder at the strain. 
Black and blue breeches. 
Pigtails bound and shining : 
Like ants crawling about. 

The hull swarms with carpenters, running in and out. 
Joiners, calkers. 

And they are all terrible talkers. 
Jem Wilson has been to sea and he tells some wonder- 
ful tales 
Of whales, and spice islands. 
And pirates off the Barbary coast. 
He boasts magnificently, with his mouth full of nails. 
Stephen Pibold has a tenor voice. 
He shifts his quid of tobacco and sings : 
L**The second in command was blear-eyed Ned : 

While the surgeon his limb was a-lopping, 
( A nine-pounder came and smack went his head. 

Pull away, pull away, pull away ! I say ; 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 187 

Rare news for my Meg of Wapping !'* 
Every Sunday 
People come in crowds 
(After church-time, of course) 
In curricles, and gigs, and wagons. 
And some have brought cold chicken and flagons 
Of wine. 

And beer in stoppered jugs. 

"Dear ! Dear ! But I tell 'ee 'twill be a fine ship. 
There's none finer in any of the slips at Chatham." 

The third Summer's roses have started in to blow. 
When the fine stern carving is begun. 
Flutings, and twinings, and long slow swirls, 
Bits of deal shaved away to thin spiral curls. 
Tap ! Tap ! A cornucopia is nailed into place. 
Rap-a-tap! They are putting up a raihng filigreed 

like Irish lace. 
The Three Town's people never saw such grace. 



188 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And tlie paint on it ! The richest gold leaf ! 

Why, the glitter when the sun is shining passes belief. 

And that row of glass windows tipped toward the sky 

Are rubies and carbuncles when the day is dry. 

Oh, my ! Oh, my ! 

They have coppered up the bottom, 

And the copper nails 

Stand about and sparkle in big wooden pails. 

Bang ! Clash ! Bang ! 

"And he swigg'd, and Nick swigg'd, 

And Ben swigg'd, and Dick swigg'd. 
And I swigg'd, and all of us swigg'd it. 

And swore there was nothing like grog." 
It seems they sing. 

Even though coppering is not an easy thing. 
What a splendid specimen of humanity is a true 

British workman. 
Say the people of the Three Towns, 
As they walk about the dockyard 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 189 

To the sound of the evening church-bells. 

And so artistic, too, each one tells his neighbour. 

What immense taste and labour ! 

Miss Jessie Prime, in a pink silk bonnet. 

Titters with delight as her eyes fall upon it. 

When she steps lightly down from Lawyer Green's 

whisky ; 
Such amazing beauty makes one feel frisky. 
She explains. 

Mr. Nichols says he is delighted 
(He is the firm) ; 
His work is all requited 
If Miss Jessie can approve. 
Miss Jessie answers that the ship is **a love." 
The sides are yellow as marigold, 
The port-lids are red when the ports are up : 
Blood-red squares like an even chequer 
Of yellow asters and portulaca. 
There is a wide "black strake" at the waterline 



190 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And above is a blue like the sky when the weather is fine. 

The inner bulwarks are painted red. 

"Why?" asks Miss Jessie. *"Tis a horrid note." 

Mr. Nichols clears his throat. 

And tells her the launching day is set. 

He says, "Be careful, the paint is wet.'* 

But Miss Jessie has touched it, her sprigged muslin 

gown 
Has a blood-red streak from the shoulder down. 
*'It looks like blood,'* says Miss Jessie with a frown. 

Tap ! Tap ! Rap ! 

An October day, with waves running in blue-white 

lines and a capful of wind. 
Three broad flags ripple out behind 
Where the masts will be : 
Royal Standard at the main. 
Admiralty flag at the fore. 
Union Jack at the mizzen. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 191 

The hammers tap harder, faster. 

They must finish by noon. 

The last nail is driven. 

But the wind has increased to half a gale. 

And the ship shakes and quivers upon the ways. 

The Commissioner of Chatham Dockyard is coming 

In his ten-oared barge from the King's Stairs ; 

The Marine's band will play " God Save Great George 

Our King;'* 
And there is to be a dinner afterwards at the Crown, 

with speeches. 
The wind screeches, and flaps the flags till they 

pound like hammers. 
The wind hums over the ship. 
And slips round the dog-shores. 
Jostling them almost to falling. 
There is no time now to wait for Commissioners 

and marine bands. 
Mr. Nichols has a bottle of port in his hands. 



192 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

He leans over, holding his hat, and shouts to the 

men below : 
**Lethergo!" 
Bang ! Bang ! Pound ! 
The dog-shores fall to the ground. 
And the ship slides down the greased planking. 
A splintering of glass, 
And port wine running all over the white and copper 

stem timbers. 
** Success to his Majesty's ship, the Bellerophon ! " 
And the red wine washes away in the waters of the 

Medway. 

II 

Paris, March, 1814 
Fine yellow sunlight down the rue du Mont Thabor. 
Ten o'clock striking from all the clock-towers of 

Paris. 
Over the door of a shop, in gilt letters : 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS ' 193 

"Martin — Parfumeur,'' and something more. 

A large gilded wooden something. 

Listen ! What a ringing of hammers ! 

Tap! 

Tap! 

Squeak ! 

Tap ! Squeak ! Tap-a-tap ! 

"Blaise." 

"Om, M'sieur 

"Don't touch the letters. My name stays." 

"Biew, M^sieur 

"Just take down the eagle, and the shield with the 

bees." 
"As M^sieu pleases." 
Tap! Squeak! Tap! 
The man on the ladder ha^lmers steadily for a minute 

or two. 
Then stops. 
**mi Patron! 
o 



194 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

They are fastened well, Nom d'un Chien I 

What if I break them?" 

** Break away, 

You and Paul must have them down to-day." 

And the hammers start again. 
Drum-beating at the something of gilded wood. 
Simshine in a golden flood 
Lighting up the yellow fronts of houses. 
Glittering each window to a flash. 
Squeak ! Squeak ! Tap ! 
The hammers beat and rap. 

A Prussian hussar on a grey horse goes by at a dash. 
From other shops, the noise of striking blows : 
Pounds, thumps, and whacks ; 
Wooden sounds : splinters — cracks. 
Paris is full of the galloping of horses and the knock- 
ing of hammers. 
** Hullo ! Friend Martin, is business slack 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 195 

That you are in the street this morning? Don't 

turn your back 
And scuttle into your shop Uke a rabbit to its hole. 
I've just been taking a stroll. 
The stinking Cossacks are bivouacked all up and 

down the Champs Elysees. 
I can't get the smell of them out of my nostrils. . 
Dirty fellows, who don't believe in frills 
Like washing. Ah, mon vieux, you'd have to go 
Out of business if you lived in Russia. So ! 
We've given up being perfumers to the Emperor, 

have we ? 
Blaise, 

Be careful of the hen. 

Maybe I can find a use for her one of these days. 
That eagle's rather well cut, Martin. 
But I'm sick of smelling Cossack, 
Take me inside and let me put my head into a stack 
Of orris-root and musk." 



196 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Within the shop, the light is dimmed to a pearl-and- 

green dusk 
Out of which dreamily sparkle counters and shelves 

of glass. 
Containing phials, and bowls, and jars, and dishes; 

a mass 
Of aqueous transparence made solid by threads of 

gold. 
Gold and glass. 
And scents which whiff across the green twilight and 

pass. 
The perfumer sits down and shakes his head : 
** Always the same. Monsieur Antoine, 
You artists are wonderful folk indeed." 
But Antoine Vernet does not heed. 
He is reading the names on the bottles and bowls. 
Done in fine gilt letters with wonderful scrolls. 
"What have we here? * Eau ImpSrial Odontalgique.' 
I must say, mon cher^ your names are chic. 



I 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 197 

But it won't do, positively it will not do. 

Elba doesn't count. Ah, here is another : 

*Baume du Commandeur.' That's better. He needs 

something to smother 
Regrets. A little lubricant, too. 
Might be useful. I have it, 
*Sage Oil,' perhaps he'll be good now; with it we'll 

submit 
This fine German rouge. I fear he is pale.'* 
** Monsieur Antoine, don't rail 
At misfortune. He treated me well and fairly." 
** And you prefer him to Bourbons, admit it squarely." 
** Heaven forbid ! " Bang ! Whack ! 
Squeak! Squeak! Crack! 
CRASH! 

**0h. Lord, Martin ! That shield is hash. 
The whole street is covered with golden bees. 
They look like so many yellow peas. 
Lying there in the mud. I'd like to paint it. 



198 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

*Plum pudding of Empire.' That's rather quaint, it 

Might take with the Kings. Shall I try ? " *' Oh, Sir, 

You distress me, you do." "Poor old Martin's purr ! 

But he hasn't a scratch in him, I know. 

Now let us get back to the powders and patches. 

Foolish man. 

The Kings are here now. We must hit on a plan 

To change all these titles as fast as we can. 

'Bouquet ImpSratrice,' Tut! Tut! Give me some 

ink — 
'Bouquet de la ReineJ what do you think? 
Not the same receipt ^ 
Now, Martin, put away your conceit. 
Who will ever know ^ 
'Extract of Nobility' — excellent, since most of them 

are killed." 
*'But, Monsieur Antoine — '* ^ 
*'You are self-willed, 
Martin. You need a salve 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 199 

For your conscience, do you ? 

Very well, we'll halve 

The compliments, also the pastes and dentifrices; 

Send some to the Kings, and some to the Em- 
presses. 

*Oil of Bitter Almonds' — the Empress Josephine can 
have that. 

*Oil of Parma Violets' fits the other one pat.'* 

Rap ! Rap ! Bang ! 

"What a hideous clatter ! 

Blaise seems determined to batter 

That poor old turkey into bits. 

And pound to jelly my excellent wits. 

Come, come, Martin, you mustn't shirk. 

*The night cometh soon' — etc. Don't jerk 

Me up like that. * Essence de la Valliere* — 

That has a charmingly Bourbon air. 

And, oh ! Magnificent ! Listen to this ! — 

* Vinaigre des Quatre Voleurs.* Nothing amiss 



goo MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

With that — England, Austria, Russia and Prussia! 

Martin, you're a wonder. 

Upheavals of continents can't keep you under.'* 

*' Monsieur Antoine, I am grieved indeed 

At such levity. What France has gone through — ** 

"Very true, Martin, very true. 

But never forget that a man must feed.'* 

Pound ! Pound ! Thump ! 

Pound ! 

"Look here, in another minute Blaise will drop that 

bird on the ground." 
Martin shrugs his shoulders. "Ah, well, what 

then?—" 
Antoine, with a laugh: "I'll give you two sous for 

that antiquated hen." 
The Imperial Eagle sells for two sous. 
And the lilies go up. 

A man must choose ! 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS SOI 

in 

Paris, April, 1814 

Cold, impassive, the marble arch of the Place du 
Carrousel. 

Haughty, contemptuous, the marble arch of the 
Place du Carrousel. 

Like a woman raped by force, rising above her fate. 

Borne up by the cold rigidity of hate. 

Stands the marble arch of the Place du Carrousel. 

Tap ! Clink-a-tmk ! 

Tap! Rap! Chink! 

What falls to the ground like a streak of flame ? 

Hush ! It is only a bit of bronze flashing in the sun. 

What are all those soldiers.^ Those are not the 
uniforms of France. 

Alas! No! The uniforms of France, Great Im- 
perial France, are done. 

They will rot away in chests and hang to dusty 
tatters in barn lofts. 



202 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

These are other armies. And their name ? 

Hush, be still for shame ; 

Be still and imperturbable like the marble arch. 

Another bright spark falls through the blue air. 

Over the Place du Carrousel a wailing of despair. 

Crowd your horses back upon the people. Uhlans 

and Hungarian Lancers, 
They see too much. 
Unfortunately, Gentlemen of the Invading Armies, 

what they do not see, they hear. 
Tap! Clink-a-tink! 
Tap! 

Another sharp spear 
Of brightness. 

And a ringing of quick metal lightness 
On hard stones. 
Workmen are chipping off the names of Napoleon's 

victories 
From the triumphal arch of the Place du Carrousel. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 203 

Do they need so much force to quell the crowd ? 
An old Grenadier of the line groans aloud. 
And each hammer tap points the sob of a woman. 
Russia, Prussia, Austria, and the faded-white-lily 

Bourbon king 
Thmk it weU 
To guard against tumult, 
A mob is an undependable thing. 
Ding ! Ding ! 

Vienna is scattered all over the Place du Carrousel 
In gUttering, bent, and twisted letters. 
Yom* betters have clattered over Vienna before. 
Officer of his Imperial Majesty our Father-in-Law ! 
Tink! Tink! 

A workman's chisel can strew you to the winds, 
Munich. 
Do they think 

To pleasure Paris, used to the fall of cities. 
By giving her a fall of letters ! 



204 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

It is a month too late. 

One month, and our lily-white Bourbon king 

Has done a colossal thing ; 

He has curdled love. 

And soured the desires of a people. 

Still the letters fall. 

The workmen creep up and down their ladders like 

lizards on a wall. 
Tap! Tap! Tink! 
Clmk! Clink! 

"Oh, merciful God, they will not touch Austerlitz! 
Strike me blind, my God, my eyes can never look on that. 
I would give the other leg to save it, it took one. 
Curse them ! Curse them ! Aim at his hat. 
Give me the stone. Why didn't you give it to me ? 
I would not have missed. Curse him ! 
Curse all of them ! They have got the * A' !'* 
Ding ! Ding ! 
"I saw the Terror, but I never saw so horrible a 

thing as this. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 205 

Vive VEmpereur ! Vive VEmpereur I ** 

"Don't strike him, Fritz. 

The mob will rise if you do. 

Just run him out to the qtiaiy 

That will get him out of the way. 

They are almost through." 

Clink! Tink! Ding! 

Clear as the sudden ring 

Of a bell 

"Z" strikes the pavement. 

Farewell, Austerlitz, Tilsit, Presbourg ; 

Farewell, greatness departed. 

Farewell, Imperial honours, knocked broadcast by 

the beating hammers of ignorant workmen. 
Straight, in the Spring moonlight. 
Rises the deflowered arch. 
In the silence, shining bright. 
She stands naked and unsubdued. 
Her marble coldness will endure the march 
Of decades. 



206 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Rend her bronzes, hammers ; 

Cast down her inscriptions. 

She is unconquerable, austere, 

Cold as the moon that swims above her 

When the nights are clear. 

IV 

Croissy, Ile-de-France, June, 1815 
* ' Who A ! Victorine . 
Devil take the mare ! I've never seen so vicious a 

beast. 
She kicked Jules the last time she was here. 
He's been lame ever since, poor chap." 
Rap ! Tap ! 

Tap-a-tap-a-tap ! Tap ! Tap ! 
"I'd rather be lame than dead at Waterloo, M'sieu 

Charles." 
**SacrS Bleu! Don't mention Waterloo, and the 

damned grinning British. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 207 

We didn't run in the old days. 
There wasn't any running at Jena. 
Those were decent days. 
And decent men, who stood up and fought. 
We never got beaten, because we wouldn't be. 
See!" 

"You would have taught them, wouldn't you. Ser- 
geant Boignet ? 
But to-day it's everyone for himself. 
And the Emperor isn't what he was." ] 
"How the Devil do you know that? 
If he was beaten, the cause 
Is the green geese in his army, led by traitors. 
Oh, I say no names. Monsieur Charles, 
You needn't hammer so loud. 
If there are any spies lurking behind the bellows, 
I beg they come out. Dirty fellows !'* 
The old Sergeant seizes a red-hot poker 
And advances, brandishing it, into the shadows.' 



208 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The rows of horses flick 

Placid tails. 

Victorine gives a savage kick 

As the nails 

Go in. Tap ! Tap ! 

Jules draws a horseshoe from the fire 

And beats it from red to peacock-blue and black,"* 

Purpling darker at each whack. 

Ding ! Dang ! Dong ! 

Ding-a-ding-dong ! 

It is a long time since any one spoke. 

Then the blacksmith brushes his hand over his eyes, 

"Well," he sighs, 

"He*s broke.'* 

The Sergeant charges out from behind the bellows. 

"It's the green geese, I tell you, 

Their hearts are all whites and yellows. 

There's no red in them. Red ! 

That's what we want. Fouche should be fed 

To the guillotine, and all Paris dance the carmagnole. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 209 

That would breed jolly fine lick-bloods 

To lead his armies to victory.'* 

*' Ancient history, Sergeant. 

He's done." 

"Say that again. Monsieur Charles, and I'll stun 

You where you stand for a dung-eating Royalist.'* 

The Sergeant gives the poker a savage twist ; 

He is as purple as the cooling horseshoes. 

The air from the bellows creaks through the flues. 

Tap ! Tap ! The blacksmith shoes Victorine, 

And through the doorway a fine sheen 

Of leaves flutters, with the sun between. 

By a spurt of fire from the forge 

You can see the Sergeant, with swollen gorge. 

Puffing, and gurgling, and choking ; 

The bellows keep on croaking. 

They wheeze. 

And sneeze. 

Creak ! Bang ! Squeeze ! 

And the hammer strokes fall like buzzing bees 



210 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Or pattering rain. 

Or faster than these. 

Like the hum of a waterfall struck by a breeze. 

Clank! from the bellows-chain pulled up and down. 

Clank! 

And sunshine twinkles on Victorine's flank. 

Starting it to blue. 

Dropping it to black. 

Clack! Clack! 

Tap-a-tap ! Tap ! 

Lord ! What galloping ! Some mishap 

Is making that man ride so furiously. 

"Frangois, you! 

Victorine won't be through 

For another quarter of an hour." "As you hope to 

die. 
Work faster, man, the order has come.'* 
"What order ? Speak out. Are you dumb ?'* 
"A chaise, without arms on the panels, at the gate 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 211 

In the far side-wall, and just to wait. 

We must be there in half an hour with swift cattle. 

You're a stupid fool if you don't hear that rattle. 

Those are German guns. Can't you guess the rest.'* 

Nantes, Rochefort, possibly Brest." 

Tap ! Tap ! as though the hammers were mad. 

Dang ! Ding ! Creak ! The farrier's lad 

Jerks the bellows till he cracks their bones. 

And the stifled air hiccoughs and groans. 

The Sergeant is lying on the floor 

Stone dead, and his hat with the tricolore 

Cockade has rolled off into the cinders. Victorine 

snorts and lays back her ears. 
What glistens on the anvil .'^ Sweat or tears? 

V 

St. Helena, May, 1821 
Tap! Tap! Tap! 
Through the white tropic night. 



212 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Tap! Tap! 

Beat the hammers. 

Unwearied, indefatigable. 

They are hanging dull black cloth about the dead. 

Lustreless black cloth 

Which chokes the radiance of the moonlight 

And puts out the little moving shadows of leaves. 

Tap ! Tap ! 

The knocking makes the candles quaver. 

And the long black hangings waver 

Tap! Tap! Tap! 

Tap! Tap! 

In the ears which do not heed. 

Tap! Tap! ^ 

Above the eyelids which do not flicker. j 

Tap! Tap! ^ 

Over the hands which do not stir. * 

Chiselled like a cameo of white agate against the 

hangings, • 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 213 

Struck to brilliance by the falling moonlight, 

A face ! 

Sharp as a frozen flame. 

Beautiful as an altar lamp of silver. 

And still. Perfectly still. 

In the next room, the men chatter 

As they eat their midnight lunches. 

A knife hits against a platter. 

But the figure on the bed 

Between the stifling black hangings 

Is cold and motionless, 

Played over by the moonlight from the windows 

And the indistinct shadows of leaves. 

Tap! Tapi 

Upholsterer Darling has a fine shop in Jamestown. 
Tap! Tap! 

Andrew Darling has ridden hard from Longwood to 
see to the work in his shop in Jamestown. 



214 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

He has a corps of men in it, toiling and swearing, 

Knocking, and measuring, and planing, and squaring. 

Working from a chart with jfigures. 

Comparing with their rules. 

Setting this and that part together with their tools. 

Tap! Tap! Tap! 

Haste indeed ! 

So great is the need 

That carpenters have been taken from the new church. 

Joiners have been called from shaping pews and 

lecterns 
To work of greater urgency. 
Coffins! 
Coffins is what they are making this bright Summer 

morning. 
Coffins — and all to measurement. 
There is a tin coffin, 
A deal coffin, 
A lead coffin. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 215 

And Captain Bennett's best mahogany dining-table 

Has been sawed up for the grand outer coffin. 

Tap! Tap! Tap! 

Sunshine outside in the square. 

But inside, only hollow coffins and the tapping upon 

them. 
The men whistle. 

And the coffins grow under their hammers 
In the darkness of the shop. 
Tap ! Tap ! Tap ! 

Tramp of men. 
Steady tramp of men. 
Slit-eyed Chinese with long pigtails 
Bearing oblong thmgs upon their shoulders ' 
March slowly along the road to Longwood. 
Their feet fall softly in the dust of the road ; 
Sometimes they call gutturally to each other and stop 
to shift shoulders. 



216 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Four coffins for the little dead man. 

Four fine coffins. 

And one of them Captain Bennett's dining-table ! 

And sixteen splendid Chinamen, all strong and able 

And of assured neutrality. 

Ah ! George of England, Lord Bathhurst & Co. 

Your princely munificence makes one's heart glow. 

Huzza ! Huzza ! For the Lion of England ! 

Tap! Tap! Tap! 

Marble likeness of an Emperor, 

Dead man, who burst your heart against a world 

too narrow. 
The hammers drum you to your last throne 
Which always you shall hold alone. 
Tap! Tap! 

The glory of your past is faded as a sunset fire, 
Your day lingers only like the tones of a wind-lyrf 
In a twilit room. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 217 

Here is the emptiness of your dream 

Scattered about you. 

Coins of yesterday. 

Double napoleons stamped with Consul or Emperor, 

Strange as those of Herculaneum — 

And you just dead ! 

Not one spool of thread 

Will these buy in any market-place. 

Lay them over him. 

They are the baubles of a crown of mist 

Worn in a vision and melted away at waking. 

Tap! Tap! 

His heart strained at kingdoms 

And now it is content with a silver dish. 

Strange World ! Strange Wayfarer ! 

Strange Destiny ! 

Lower it gently beside him and let it lie. 

Tap! Tap! Tap! 



218 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



TWO TRAVELLERS IN THE PLACE 

VENDOME 

Reign of Louis Philippe 

A GREAT tall column spearing at the sky 
With a little man on top. Goodness ! Tell me why ? 
He looks a silly thing enough to stand up there so 
high. 

What a strange fellow, like a soldier in a play. 
Tight-fitting coat with the tails cut away. 
High-crowned hat which the brims overlay. 

Two-horned hat makes an outline like a bow. 
Must have a sword, I can see the light glow 
Between a dark line and his leg. Vertigo 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 219 

I get gazing up at him, a pygmy flashed with sun. 
A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one ? 
As bright as a jewelled crown hung above a throne. 

Say, what is the use of him if he doesn't turn ? 
Just put up to glitter there, like a torch to burn, 
A sort of sacrificial show in a lofty urn ? 

But why a little soldier in an obsolete dress ? 
I'd rather see a Goddess with a spear, I confess. 
Something allegorical and fine. Why, yes — 

I cannot take my eyes from him. I don't know why 

at all. 
I've looked so long the whole thing swims. I feel 

he ought to fall. 
Foreshortened there among the clouds he's pitifully 

small. 



220 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

What do you say? There used to be an Emperor 

standmg there, 
With flowing robes and laurel crown. Really ? Yet 

I declare 
Those spiral battles round the shaft don't seem just 

his affair. 

A togaed, laurelled man's I mean. Now this chap 

seems to feel 
As though he owned those soldiers. Whew! How 

he makes one reel. 
Swinging round above his circling armies in a wheel. 

Sweeping round the sky in an orbit like the sun's. 
Flashing sparks like cannon-balls from his own long 

guns. 
Perhaps my sight is tired, but that figure simply stuns. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 221 

How low the houses seem, and all the people are 

mere flies. 
That fellow pokes his hat up till it scratches on tbj 

skies. 
Impudent! Audacious! But, by Jove, he blinds 

the eyes ! 



WAR PICTURES 



THE ALLIES 

August 14th, 1914 

Into the brazen, burnished sky, the cry hurls itself. 
The zigzagging cry of hoarse throats, it floats against 
the hard winds, and binds the head of the serpent 
to its tail, the long snail-slow serpent of marching 
men. Men weighed down with rifles and knapsacks, 
and parching with war. The cry jars and splits 
against the brazen, burnished sky. 

This is the war of wars, and the cause? Has this 
writhing worm of men a cause ? 

Crackling against the polished sky is an eagle with 
a sword. The eagle is red and its head is flame. 

In the shoulder of the worm is a teacher. 

His tongue laps the war-sucked air in drought, 

but he yells defiance at the red-eyed eagle, and in his 
Q 



226 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

ears are the bells of new philosophies, and their tink- 
ling drowns the sputter of the burning sword. He 
shrieks, "God damn you! When you are broken, 
the word will strike out new shoots." 

His boots are tight, the sun is hot, and he may be 
shot, but he is in the shoulder of the worm. 

A dust speck in the worm's belly is a poet. 

He laughs at the flaring eagle and makes a long 
nose with his fingers. He will fight for smooth, white 
sheets of paper, and uncurdled ink. The sputtering 
sword cannot make liim blink, and liis thoughts are 
wet and rippling. They cool his heart. 

He will tear the eagle out of the sky and give the 
earth tranquillity, and loveliness printed on white 
paper. 

The eye of the serpent is an owner of mills. 
He looks at the glaring sword which has snapped 
his machinery and struck away his men. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 227 

But it will all come again, when the sword is 
broken to a million dying stars, and there are no more 
wars. 

Bankers, butchers, shop-keepers, painters, farmers 
— men, sway and sweat. They will fight for the 
earth, for the increase of the slow, sure roots of peace, 
for the release of hidden forces. They jibe at the 
eagle and his scorching sword. 

One ! Two ! — One ! Two ! — clump the heavy 
boots. The cry hurtles against the sky. 

Each man pulls his belt a little tighter, and shifts 
his gun to make it lighter. Each man thinks of a 
woman, and slaps out a curse at the eagle. The 
sword jumps in the hot sky, and the worm crawls on 
to the battle, stubbornly. 

This is the war of wars, from eye to tail the serpent 
has one cause : 

PEACE ! 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



THE BOMBARDMENT 

Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the 
city. It stops a moment on the carved head of 
Saint John, then sHdes on again, slipping and trick- 
ling over his stone cloak. It splashes from the 
lead conduit of a gargoyle, and falls from it in 
turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square. 
Where are the people, and why does the fretted 
steeple sweep about in the sky ? Boom ! The sound 
swings against the rain. Boom, again ! After it, only 
water rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from 
the spout of the gargoyle. Silence. Ripples and 
mutters. Boom ! 

The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes 
swarm about from the firelight. The lustres of the 
chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies leap in 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 229 

the bohemian glasses on the Stager e. Her hands are 
restless, but the white masses of her hair are quite 
still. Boom ! Will it never cease to torture, this 
iteration ! Boom ! The vibration shatters a glass 
on the Stagere. It lies there, formless and glowing, 
with all its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, 
spilled, flowing red, blood-red. A thin bell-note 
pricks through the silence. A door creaks. The 
old lady speaks: "Victor, clear away that broken 
glass." "Alas! Madame, the bohemian glass!'* 
"Yes, Victor, one hundred years ago my father 
brought it — " Boom ! The room shakes, the servi- 
tor quakes. Another goblet shivers and breaks. 
Boom! 

It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, stream- 
ing rain, and he is shut within its clash and murmur. 
Inside is his candle, his table, his ink, his pen, and 
his dreams. He is thinking, and the walls are pierced 



230 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

with beams of sunshine, slipping through young green. 
A fountain tosses itself up at the blue sky, and through 
the spattered water in the basin he can see copper 
carp, lazily floating among cold leaves. A wind- 
harp in a cedar-tree grieves and whispers, and words 
blow into his brain, bubbled, iridescent, shooting 
up like flowers of fire, higher and higher. Boom! 
The flame-flowers snap on their slender stems. The 
fountain rears up in long broken spears of dishevelled 
water and flattens into the earth. Boom ! And 
there is only the room, the table, the candle, and 
the sliding rain. Again, Boom ! — Boom ! — Boom ! 
He stuffs his fingers into his ears. He sees corpses, 
and cries out in fright. Boom ! It is night, and 
they are shelling the city ! Boom ! Boom ! 

A child wakes and is afraid, and weeps in the 
darkness. What has made the bed shake? "Mother, 
where are you? I am awake." "Hush, my Dar- 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 231 

ling, I am here." "But, Mother, something so 
queer happened, the room shook." Boom! *'0h! 
What is it.? What is the matter ? " Boom! "Where 
is Father.? I am so afraid." Boom! The child 
sobs and shrieks. The house trembles and creaks. 
Boom ! 

Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials lie shattered. 
All his trials oozing across the floor. The life that 
was his choosing, lonely, urgent, goaded by a hope, 
all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory, 
that is his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, 
and the jig of drunken brutes. Diseases like snakes 
crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime. 
Wails from people burying their dead. Through 
the window, he can see the rocking steeple. A ball 
of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and the sky tears 
apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire, behind the 
lacings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved 



! 



232 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

tracings, squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat 
from the gargoyles, coils round the head of Saint John, 
and aureoles him in light. It leaps into the night 
and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a 
burning stain on the white, wet night. 

Boom ! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses 
next to it begin to scorch. Boom ! The bohemian 
glass on the Stagere is no longer there. Boom ! A 
stalk of flame sways against the red damask cur- 
tains. The old lady cannot walk. She watches 
the creeping stalk and counts. Boom ! — Boom ! — 
Boom! 

The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps 
him in a sheet of silver. But it is threaded with gold 
and powdered with scarlet beads. The city burns. 
Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, streaming, 
run the flames. Over roofs, and walls, and shops, 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 233 

and stalls. Smearing its gold on the sky, the fire 
dances, lances itself through the doors, and lisps and 
chuckles along the floors. 

The child wakes again and screams at the yellow 
petalled flower flickering at the window. The little 
red lips of flame creep along the ceiling beams. 

The old man sits among his broken experiments 
and looks at the burning Cathedral. Now the streets 
are swarming with people. They seek shelter and 
crowd into the cellars. They shout and call, and 
over all, slowly and without force, the rain drops 
into the city. Boom ! And the steeple crashes 
down among the people. Boom ! Boom, again ! 
The water rushes along the gutters. The fire roars 
and mutters. Boom ! 



234 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



LEAD SOLDIERS 

The nursery fire burns brightly, crackling in cheer- 
ful little explosions and trails of sparks up the back of 
the chimney. Miniature rockets peppering the black 
bricks with golden stars, as though a gala flamed a 
night of victorious wars. 

The nodding mandarin on the bookcase moves his 
head forward and back, slowly, and looks into the air 
with his blue-green eyes. He stares into the air and 
nods — forward and back. The red rose in his hand 
is a crimson splash on his yellow coat. Forward and 
back, and his blue-green eyes stare into the air, and 
he nods — nods. 

Tommy's soldiers march to battle. 
Trumpets flare and snare-drums rattle. 
Bayonets flash, and sabres glance — 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 235 

How the horses snort and prance ! 

Cannon drawn up in a hne 

GUtter in the dizzy shine 

Of the morning sunhght. Flags 

Ripple colours in great jags. 

Red blows out, then blue, then green. 

Then all three — a weaving sheen 

Of prismed patriotism. March 

Tommy's soldiers, stiff and starch. 

Boldly stepping to the rattle 

Of the drums, they go to battle. 

Tommy lies on his stomach on the floor and directs 
his colunms. He puts his infantry in front, and be- 
fore them ambles a mounted band. Their instru- 
ments make a strand of gold before the scarlet- 
tunicked soldiers, and they take very long steps on 
their Uttle green platforms, and from the ranks 
bursts the song of Tommy's soldiers marching to 



236 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

battle. The song jolts a little as the green platforms 
stick on the thick carpet. Tommy wheels his guns 
round the edge of a box of blocks, and places a squad 
of cavalry on the commanding eminence of a footstool. 

The fire snaps pleasantly, and the old Chinaman 
nods — nods. The fire makes the red rose in his 
hand glow and twist. Hist! That is a bold song 
Tommy's soldiers sing as they march along to battle. 

Crack ! Rattle ! The sparks fly up the chimney. 

Tommy's army's off to war — 
Not a soldier knows what for. 
But he knows about his rifle, 
How to shoot it, and a trifle 
Of the proper thing to do 
When it's he who is shot through. 
Like a cleverly trained flea. 
He can follow instantly 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 237 

Orders, and some quick commands 

Really make severe demands 

On a mind that's none too rapid. 

Leaden brains tend to the vapid. 

But how beautifully dressed 

Is this army ! How impressed 

Tommy is when at his heel 

All his baggage wagons wheel 

About the patterned carpet, and 

Moving up his heavy guns 

He sees them glow with diamond suns\ 

Flashing all along each barrel. 

And the gold and blue apparel 

Of his gunners is a joy. 

Tommy is a lucky boy. 

Boom ! Boom ! Ta-ra ! 

The old mandarin nods under his purple umbrella. 
The rose in his hand shoots its petals up in thin 



238 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

quills of crimson. Then they collapse and shrivel 
like red embers. The fire sizzles. 

Tommy is galloping his cavalry, two by two, over 
the floor. They must pass the open terror of the 
door and gain the enemy encamped under the wash- 
stand. The mounted band is very grand, playing 
allegro and leading the infantry on at the double 
quick. The tassel of the hearth-rug has flung down 
the bass-drum, and he and his dapple-grey horse lie 
overtripped, slipped out of line, with the little lead 
drumsticks glistening to the fire's shine. 

The fire burns and crackles, and tickles the tripped 
bass-drum with its sparkles. 

The marching army hitches its little green platforms 
valiantly, and steadily approaches the door. The 
overturned bass-drummer, lying on the hearth-rug, 
melting in the heat, softens and sheds tears. The song 
jeers at his impotence, and flaunts the glory of the 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 239 

martial and still upstanding, vaunting the deeds it 
will do. For are not Tommy's soldiers all bright and 
new? 

Tommy's leaden soldiers we. 
Glittering with efficiency. 
Not a button's out of place. 
Tons and tons of golden lace 
Wind about our officers. 
Every manly bosom stirs 
At the thought of killing — killing ! 
Tommy's dearest wish fulfilling. 
We are gaudy, savage, strong. 
And our loins so ripe we long 
First to kill, then procreate. 
Doubling so the laws of Fate. ' 
On their women we have sworn 
To graft our sons. And overborne 
They'll rear us younger soldiers, so 



240 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Shall our race endure and grow. 
Waxing greater in the wombs 
Borrowed of them, while damp tombs 
Rot their men. O Glorious War ! 
Goad us with your points, Great Star ! 

The china mandarin on the bookcase nods slowly, 
forward and back — forward and back — and the 
red rose writhes and wriggles, thrusting its flaming 
petals imder and over one another like tortured 



The fire strokes them with its dartles, and purrs at 
them, and the old man nods. 

Tommy does not hear the song. He only sees the 
beautiful, new, gaily-coloured lead soldiers. They 
belong to him, and he is very proud and happy. He 
shouts his orders aloud, and gallops his cavalry past 
the door to the wash-stand. He creeps over the floor 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 241 

on his hands and knees to one battalion and another, 
but he sees only the bright colours of his soldiers and 
the beautiful precision of their gestures. He is a 
lucky boy to have such fine lead soldiers to enjoy. 

Tommy catches his toe in the leg of the wash- 
stand, and jars the pitcher. He snatches at it with 
his hands, but it is too late. The pitcher falls, and 
as it goes, he sees the white water flow over its lip. 
It slips between his fingers and crashes to the floor. 
But it is not water which oozes to the door. The 
stain is glutinous and dark, a spark from the fire- 
light heads it to red. In and out, between the fine, 
new soldiers, licking over the carpet, squirms the 
stream of blood, lapping at the little green platforms, 
and flapping itself against the painted uniforms. 

The nodding mandarin moves his head slowly, 
forward and back. The rose is broken, and where it 



242 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

fell is black blood. The old mandarin leers under his 
purple umbrella, and nods — forward and back, 
staring into the air with blue-green eyes. Every 
time his head comes forward a rosebud pushes be- 
tween his lips, rushes into full bloom, and drips to the 
ground with a splashing sound. The pool of black 
blood grows and grows, with each dropped rose, and 
spreads out to join the stream from the wash-stand. 
The beautiful army of lead soldiers steps boldly for- 
ward, but the little green platforms are covered in 
the rising stream of blood. 

The nursery fire burns brightly and flings fan- 
bursts of stars up the chimney, as though a gala 
flamed a night of victorious wars. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 243 



THE PAINTER ON SILK 

There was a man 
Who made his living 
By painting roses 
Upon silk. 

He sat in an upper chamber 
And painted. 

And the noises of the street 
Meant nothing to him. 

When he heard bugles, and fifes, and drums, 
He thought of red, and yellow, and white roses 
Bursting in the sunshine. 
And smiled as he worked. 



244 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

He thought only of roses. 

And silk. 

When he could get no more silk 

He stopped painting 

And only thought 

Of roses. 

The day the conquerors 

Entered the city. 

The old man 

Lay dying. 

He heard the bugles and drums. 

And wished he could paint the roses 

Bursting into sound. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 245 



A BALLAD OF FOOTMEN 

Now what in the name of the sun and the stars 
Is the meaning of this most unholy of wars ? 

Do men find life so full of humour and joy 

That for want of excitement they smash up the toy ? 

Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses 
All bent upon killing, because their "of courses'* 

Are not quite the same. All these men by the ears. 
And nine nations of women choking with tears. 

It is folly to think that the will of a king 

Can force men to make ducks and drakes of a thing 



246 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

They value, and life is, at least one supposes. 
Of some little interest, even if roses 

Have not grown up between one foot and the other. 
What a marvel bureaucracy is, which can smother 

Such quite elementary feelings, and tag 
A man with a number, and set him to wag 

His legs and his arms at the word of command 
Or the blow of a whistle ! He's certainly damned. 

Fit only for mince-meat, if a little gold lace 
And an upturned moustache can set him to face 

Bullets, and bayonets, and death, and diseases. 
Because some one he calls his Emperor, pleases. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 247 

If each man were to lay down his weapon, and say. 
With a click of his heels, **I wish you Good-day, '*j 

Now what, may I ask, could the Emperor do ? 
A king and his minions are really so few. 

Angry ? Oh, of course, a most furious Emperor ! 
But the men are so many they need not mind his 
temper, or 

The dire results which could not be inflicted. 
With no one to execute sentence, convicted 

Is just the weak wind from an old, broken bellows. 
What lackeys men are, who might be such fine 
fellows ! 



248 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

To be killing each other, unmercifully. 

At an order, as though one said, "Bring up the tea.** 

Or is it that tasting the blood on their jaws 
They lap at it, drunk with its ferment, and laws 

So patiently builded, are nothing to drinking 
More blood, any blood. They don't notice its 
stinking. 

I don't suppose tigers do, fighting cocks, sparrows. 
And, as to men — what are men, when their marrows 

Are running with blood they have gulped ; it is plain 
Such excellent sport does not recollect pain. 

Toll the bells in the steeples left standing. Half-mast 
The flags which meant order, for order is past. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 249 

Take the dust of the streets and sprinkle your head. 
The civilization we've worked for is dead. 

Squeeze into this archway, the head of the line 
Has just swung round the corner to Die Wacht am 
Rhein, 



THE OVERGROWN PASTURE 



REAPING 

You want to know what's the matter with me, do 

yer? 
My ! ain't men blinder'n moles ? 
It ain't nothin' new, be sure o' that. 
Why, ef you'd had eyes you'd ha' seed 
Me changin' under your very nose. 
Each day a little diflF'rent. 
But you never see nothin', you don't. 
Don't touch me, Jake, 
Don't you dars't to touch me, 
I ain't in no humour. 
That's what's come over me ; 
Jest a change clear through. 
You lay still, an' I'll tell yer, 
I've had it on my mind to tell yer 
Fer some time. 



254 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

It's a strain livin' a lie from mornin' till night. 

An' I'm goin' to put an end to it right now. 

An' don't make any mistake about one thing. 

When I married yer I loved yer. 

Why, your voice 'ud make 

Me go hot and cold all over, 

An* your kisses most stopped my heart from beatin*. 

Lord ! I was a silly fool. 

But that's the way 'twas. 

Well, I married yer 

An' thought Heav'n was comin' 

To set on the door-step. 

Heav'n didn't do no settin'. 

Though the first year warn't so bad. 

The baby's fever threw you off some, I guess. 

An' then I took her death real hard. 

An' a mopey wife kind o' disgusts a man. 

I ain't blamin' yer exactly. 

But that's how 'twas. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 255 

Do lay quiet, 

I know I'm slow, but it*s harder to say 'n I thought. 

There come a time when I got to be 

More wife agin than mother. 

The mother part was sort of a waste 

When we didn't have no other child. 

But you'd got used ter lots o' things. 

An' you was all took up with the farm. 

Many's the time I've laid awake 

Watchin' the moon go clear through the elm-tree» 

Out o' sight. 

I'd foUer yer around like a dog. 

An* set in the chair you'd be'n settin' in. 

Jest to feel its arms around me. 

So long's I didn't have yours. 

It preyed on me, I guess, 

Longin' and longin' 

While you was busy all day, and snorin' all night. 

Yes, I know you're wide awake now. 



256 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

But now ain't then. 

An' I guess you'll think diff'rent 

When I'm done. 

Do you mind the day you went to Hadrock ? 

I didn't want to stay home for reasons. 

But you said someone 'd have to be here 

'Cause Elmer was comin' to see t' th' telephone. 

An' you never see why I was so set on goin' with yer, 

Our married life hadn't be'n any great shakes. 

Still marriage is marriage, an' I was raised God- 
fear in'. 

But, Lord, you didn't notice nothin', 

An' Elmer hangin' around all Winter ! 

'Twas a lovely mornin*. 

The apple-trees was jest elegant 

With their blossoms all flared out. 

An' there warn't a cloud in the sky. 

You went, you wouldn't pay no 'tention to what I 
said. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 257 

An' I heard the Ford chuggin' for most a mile, 
The air was so still. 
Then Elmer come. 
It's no use your frettin', Jake, 
I'll tell you all about it. 
I know what I'm doin'. 
An' what's worse, I know what I done. 
Elmer fixed th* telephone in about two minits. 
An' he didn't seem in no hurry to go. 
An' I don't know as I wanted him to go either, 
I was awful mad at your not takin' me with yer. 
An' I was tired o' wishin' and wishin* 
An' gittin' no comfort. 

I guess it ain't necessary to tell yer all the things. 
He stayed to dinner. 
An' he helped me do the dishes, 
An' he said a home was a fine thing, 
An' I said dishes warn't a home 
Nor yet the room they're in. 
s 



258 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

He said a lot o' things. 

An' I fended him oflF at first. 

But he got talkin' all around me, 

Clost up to the things I'd be'n thinkin'. 

What's the use o* me goin' on, Jake, 

You know. 

He got all he wanted. 

An' I give it to him. 

An' what's more, I'm glad ! 

I ain't dead, anyway. 

An' somebody thinks I'm somethin*. 

Keep away, Jake, 

You can kill me to-morrer if you want to. 

But I'm goin' to have my say. 

Funny thing ! Guess I ain't made to hold a man. 

Elmer ain't be'n here for mor'n two months. 

I don't want to pretend nothin', 

Mebbe if he'd be'n lately 

I shouldn't have told yer. 



MEX, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 259 

I'll go away in the mornin', o' course. 

What you want the light fer ? 

I don't look no diff'rent. 

Ain't the moon bright enough 

To look at a woman that's deceived yer by ? 

Don't, Jake, don't, you can't love me now ! 

It ain't a question of forgiveness. 

Why ! I'd be thinkin' o' Elmer ev'ry minute ;^ 

It ain't decent. 

Oh, my God ! It ain't decent any more either way ! 



260 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



OFF THE TURNPIKE 

Good ev'nin', Mis' Priest. 

I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye. 

Yes, it's all over. 

All my things is packed 

An' every last one o' them boxes 

Is on Bradley's team 

Bein* hauled over to th' depot. 

No, I ain't goin' back agin. 

I'm stoppin' over to French's fer to-night. 

And goin* down first train in th' mornin'. 

Yes, it do seem kinder queer 

Not to be goin' to see Cherry's Orchard no more, 

But Land Sakes ! When a change's comin'. 

Why, I al'ays say it can't come too quick. 

Now, that's real kind o' you, 

Your doughnuts is always so tasty. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 2C1 

Yes, I*m goin' to Chicago, 

To my niece. 

She's married to a fine man, hardware business. 

An' doin' real well, she tells me. 

Lizzie's be'n at me to go out ther for the longest 

while. 
She ain't got no kith nor kin to Chicago, you know 
She's rented me a real nice little flat. 
Same house as hers. 
An' I'm goin' to try that city livin' folks say's so 

pleasant. . 
Oh, yes, he was real generous. 
Paid me a sight o' money fer the Orchard ; 
I told him 'twouldn't yield nothin' but stones. 
But he ain't farmin' it. 
Lor', no. Mis' Priest, 

He's jest took it to set and look at the view. 
Mebbe he wouldn't be so stuck on the view 
Ef he'd seed it every mornin' and night for forty yeai 



262 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Same's as I have. 

I dessay it's pretty enough. 

But it's so pressed into me 

I c'n see't with my eyes shut. 

No. I ain't cold. Mis' Priest, 

Don't shut th' door. 

I'll be all right in a minit. 

But I ain't a mite sorry to leave that view. 

Well, mebbe 'tis queer to feel so, 

An' mebbe 'taint. 

My ! But that tea's revivin*. 

Old things ain't always pleasant things. Mis* Priest. 

No, no, I don't cal'late on comin' back. 

That's why I'd ruther be to Chicago, 

Boston's too near. % 

It ain't cold. Mis' Priest, 

It's jest my thoughts. ^ 

I ain't sick, only — 

Mis' Priest, ef you've nothin' ter take yer time, 

i 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 263 

An* have a mind to listen, 

Ther's somethin' I'd like ter speak about 

I ain't never mentioned it. 

But I'd like to tell yer 'fore I go. 

Would you mind lowerin' them shades. 

Fall twilight's awful grey. 

An' that fire's real cosy with the shades drawed. 

Well, I guess folks about here think I've be'n dret'ful 

onsociable. 
You needn't say 'taint so, 'cause I know diff'rent. 
An* what's more, it's true. 

Well, the reason is I've be'n scared out o' my life. 
Scared ev'ry minit o' th' time, fer eight year. 
Eight mortal year 'tis, come next June. 
'Twas on the eighteenth o' June, 
Six months after I'd buried my husband. 
That somethin' happened ter me. 
Mebbe you'll mind that afore that 
I was a cheery body. 



264 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Hiram was too, 

Al'ays liked to ask a neighbor in. 
An' ev'n when he died, 

Barrin' low sperrits, I warn't averse to seein' nobody. 
But that eighteenth o' June changed ev'rythin*. 
I was doin' most o' th' farmwork myself. 
With jest a hired boy, Clarence King, 'twas, 
Comin' in fer an hour or two. 
Well, that eighteenth o' June 
I was goin' round, 

Lockin' up and seein' to things 'fore I went to bed. 
I was jest steppin' out t' th' barn, 
Goin' round outside 'stead o' through the shed, 
'Cause there was such a sight o' moonlight 
Somehow or another I thought 'twould be pretty out- 
doors. 
I got settled for pretty things that night, I guess. 
I ain't stuck on 'em no more. 
Well, them laylock bushes side o' th' house 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 265 

Was real lovely. 

Glitt'rin* and shakin' in the moonlight. 

An' the smell o' them rose right up 

An' most took my breath away. 

The colour o' the spikes was all faded out. 

They never keep their colour when the moon's on 

'em. 
But the smell fair 'toxicated me. 
I was al'ays partial to a sweet scent. 
An' I went close up t' th' bushes 
So's to put my face right into a flower. 
Mis' Priest, jest's I got breathin' in that laylock 

bloom 
I saw, layin' right at my feet, 
A man's hand ! 

It was as white's the side o* th' house. 
And sparklin' like that lum'nous paint they put on 

gate-posts. 
I screamed right out. 



266 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

I couldn't help it, 

An' I could hear my scream 

Goin' over an' over 

In that echo be'ind th' barn. 

Hearin' it agin an' agin like that 

Scared me so, I dar'sn't scream any more. 

I jest stood ther. 

And looked at that hand. 

I thought the echo'd begin to hammer like my heart. 

But it didn't. 

There was only th' wind, 

Sighin' through the laylock leaves. 

An' slappin* 'em up agin the house. 

Well, I guess I looked at that hand 

Most ten minits. 

An' it never moved. 

Jest lay there white as white. 

After a while I got to thinkin' that o' course 

'Twas some drunken tramp over from Redfield. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 267 

That calmed me some, 

An' I commenced to think I'd better git him out 

From under them laylocks. 

I planned to drag him in t' th' barn 

An' lock him in ther till Clarence come in th' mornin*. 

I got so mad thinkin' o' that all-fired brazen tramp 

Asleep in my laylocks, 

I jest stooped down and grabbed th* hand and give 

it an awful pull. 
Then I bumped right down settin' on the ground. 
Mis' Priest, ther warn't no body come with the hand. 
No, it ain't cold, it's jest that I can't abear thinkin' 

of it, 
Ev'n now. 
I'll take a sip o' tea. 
Thank you, Mis' Priest, that's better. 
I'd ruther finish now I've begun. 
Thank you, jest the same. 
I dropped the hand's ef it'd be'n red hot 



268 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

'Stead o' ice cold. 

Fer a minit or two I jest laid on that grass 

Pantin'. 

Then I up and run to them laylocks 

An* pulled 'em every which way. 

True es I'm settin' here, Mis' Priest, 

Ther warn't nothin' ther. 

I peeked an' pryed all about 'em. 

But ther warn't no man ther 

Neither livin' nor dead. 

But the hand was ther all right, 

Upside down, the way I'd dropped it. 

And glist'nin' fit to dazzle yer. 

I don't know how I done it. 

An' I don't know why I done it. 

But I wanted to git that dret'ful hand out o' sight 

I got in t' th' barn, somehow. 

An' felt roun' till I got a spade. 

I couldn't stop fer a lantern. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 269 

Besides, the moonlight was bright enough in all con- 
science. 
Then I scooped that awful thing up in th' spade. 
I had a sight o* trouble doin' it. 
It slid oflF, and tipped over, and I couldn't bear 
Ev'n to touch it with my foot to prop it. 
But I done it somehow. 
Then I carried it off be'ind the barn, 
Clost to an old apple-tree 
Where you couldn*t see from the house. 
An* I buried it, 
Good an' deep. 

I don't rec'lect nothin' more o' that night. 

Clarence woke me up in th' mornin', 

HoUerin* fer me to come down and set th' milk. 

When he'd gone, 

I stole roun* to the apple-tree 

And seed the earth all new turned 



270 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Where I left it in my hurry. 

I did a heap o' gardenin' 

That mornin'. 

I couldn't cut no big sods 

Fear Clarence would notice and ask me what I wanted 

'em fer. 
So I got teeny bits o' turf here and ther. 
And no one couldn't tell ther'd be'n any diggin' ; 
When I got through. 

They was awful days after that. Mis' Priest, 
I used ter go every mornin' and poke about them 

bushes. 
An' up and down the fence, 
Ter find the body that hand come oflF of. 
But I couldn't never find nothin'. 
I'd lay awake nights 

Hearin' them laylocks blowin' and whiskin*. 
At last I had Clarence cut 'em down 
An' make a big bonfire of 'em. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 271 

I told him the smell made me sick. 

An' that warn't no lie, 

I can't abear the smell on *em now-* 

An' no wonder, es you say. 

I fretted somethin' awful 'bout that hand 

I wondered, could it be Hiram's, 

But folks don't rob graveyards hereabouts. 

Besides, Hiram's hands warn't that awful, starin* 

white. 
I give up seein' people, 
I was afeared I'd say somethin*. 
You know what folks thought o' me 
Better'n I do, I dessay. 
But mebbe now you'll see I couldn't do nothin* 

diflF'rent. 
But I stuck it out, 
I warn't goin' to be downed 
By no loose hand, no matter how it come ther 
But that ain't the worst. Mis' Priest, 



272 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Not by a long ways. 

Two year ago, Mr. Densmore made me an offer for 

Cherry's Orchard. 
Well, I'd got used to th' thought o' bein' sort o' 

blighted, 
An' I warn't scared no more. 
Lived down my fear, I guess. 
I'd kinder got used to th' thought o' that awful 

night, 
And I didn't mope much about it. 
Only I never went out o' doors by moonlight ; 
That stuck. 

Well, when Mr. Densmore's offer come, 
I started thinkin' 'bout the place 
An' all the things that had gone on ther. 
Thinks I, I guess I'll go and see where I put the 

hand. 
I was foolhardy with the long time that had gone by. 
I know'd the place real well, 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 273 

Fer I'd put it right in between two o' the apple roots. 

I don't know what possessed me, Mis' Priest, 

But I kinder wanted to know 

That the hand had been flesh and bone, anyway. 

It had sorter bothered me, thinkin' I might ha' im- 
agined it. 

I took a mornin' when the sun was real pleasant and 
warm ; 

I guessed I wouldn't jump for a few old bones. 

But I did jump, somethin' wicked. 

Ther warn't no bones ! 

Ther warn't nothin' ! 

Not ev'n the gold ring I'd minded bein' on the little 
finger. 

I don't know ef ther ever was anythin*. 

I've worried myself sick over it. 

I be'n diggin' and diggin' day in and day out 

Till Clarence ketched me at it. 

Oh, I know'd real well what you all thought, 
T 



274 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

An' I ain't sayin' you're not right. 

But I ain't goin' to end in no county 'sylum 

If I c'n help it. 

The shiv'rin' fits come on me sudden Hke. 

I know 'em, don't you trouble. 

I've fretted considerable about the 'sylum, 

I guess I be'n frettin' all the time I ain't be'n diggin' 

But anyhow I can't dig to Chicago, can I ? 

Thank you. Mis' Priest, 

I'm better now. I only dropped in in passin'. 

I'll jest be steppin' along down to French's. 

No, I won't be seein' nobody in the mornin*. 

It's a pretty early start. 

Don't you stand ther. Mis' Priest, 

The wind'll blow yer lamp out. 

An' I c'n see easy, I got aholt o' the gate now. 

I ain't a mite tired, thank you. 

Good-night. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 275 



THE GROCERY 



"Hullo, Alice!" 

"Hullo, Leon!" 

*' Say, Alice, gi' me a couple 

O' them two for five cigars. 

Will yer ? " 

"Where's your nickel?" 

"My ! Ain't you close ! 

Can't trust a feller, can yer." 

"Trust you ! Why 

What you owe this store 

Would set you up in business. 

I can't think why Father 'lows it." 

"Yer Father's a sight more neighbourly 

Than you be. That's a fact. 

Besides, he knows I got a vote." 

"A vote ! Oh, yes, you got a vote ! 



276 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

A lot o' good the Senate'll be to Father 

WTien all his bank account 

Has run away in credits. 

There's your cigars. 

If you can relish smokin' 

With all you owe us standin'." 

*'I dunno as that makes 'em taste any diff'rent. 

You ain't fair to me, Alice, 'deed you ain't. 

I work when anythin's doin*. 

I'll get a carpenterin' job next Summer sure. 

Cleve was tellin' me to-day he'd take me on come 

Spring." 
"Come Spring, and this December ! 
I've no patience with you, Leon, 
Shilly-shallyin' the way you do. 
Here, lift over them crates o' oranges 
I wanter fix 'em in the winder." 
"It riles yer, don't it, me not havin' work. 
You pepper up about it somethin' good. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 277 

You pick an* pick, and that don't help a mite. 

Say, Alice, do come in out o' that winder. 

Th' oranges c*n wait. 

An* I don't like talkin* to yer back.'* 

"Don't you! Well, you'd better make the best o* 

what you can git. 
Maybe you won't have my back to talk to soon. 
They look good in pyramids with the 'lectric light on 

'em. 
Don't they ? 

Now hand me them bananas 

An' I'll string 'em right acrost." * 

**What do yer mean 
'Bout me not havin' you to talk to ? 
Are yer springin' somethin' on me?'* 
"I don't know 'bout springin* 
When I'm tellin' you right out. 
I'm goin* away, that's all.'* 
"Where? Why? 



278 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

What yer mean — goin' away ?'* 
'I've took a place 
Down to Boston, in a candy store 
For the holidays." 
"Good Land, Alice, 
What in the Heavens fer !" 
*'To earn some money. 
And to git away from here, I guess." 
"Ain't yer Father got enough? 
Don't he give yer proper pocket-money ? " 
"He'd have a plenty, if you folks paid him." 
"He's rich I tell yer. 
I never figured he'd be close with you." 
"Oh, he ain't. Not close. 
That ain't why. 

But I must git away from here. ] 
I must ! I must ! " 
"You got a lot o' reason in yer 
To-night. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 279 

How long d' you cal'late 

You'll be gone?'* 

"Maybe for always." 

"What ails yer, Alice? 

Talkin' wild like that. 

Ain't you an' me goin' to be married 

Some day." 

" Some day ! Some day ! 

I guess the sun'U never rise on some day." 

"So that's the trouble. 

Same old story. 

'Cause I ain't got the cash to settle right now. 

You know I love yer. 

An' I'll marry yer as soon 

As I c'n raise the money." 

"You've said that any time these five year. 

But you don't do nothin'." 

"Wot could I do? 

Ther ain't no work here Winters. 



280 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Not fer a carpenter, ther ain't." 

**I guess you warn't born a carpenter. 

Ther's ice-cuttin' a plenty." 

"I got a dret'ful tender throat; 

Dr. Smiles he told me 

I mustn't resk ice-cuttin'." 

"Why haven't you gone to Boston, 

And hunted up a job?" 

"Have yer forgot the time I went expressin' 

In the American office, down ther?" 

"And come back two weeks later ! 

No, I ain't." 

"You didn't want I should git hurted, 

Did yer ? 

I'm a sight too light fer all that hftin' work. 

My back was commencin' to strain, as 'twas. 

Ef I was like yer brother now, 

I'd ha' be'n down to the city long ago. 

But I'm too clumsy fer a dancer. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 281 

I ain't got Arthur's luck." 

"Do you call it luck to be a disgrace to your folks. 

And git locked up in jail !" 

"Oh, come now, Alice, 

* Disgrace ' is a mite strong. 

Why, the jail was a joke. 

Art's all right." 

"All right! 

All right to dance, and smirk, and lie 

For a livin*. 

And then in the end 

Lead a silly girl to give you 

What warn't hers to give 

By pretendin' you'd marry her — 

And she a pupil." 

"He'd ha' married her right enough. 

Her folks was millionaires.'* 

"Yes, he'd ha' married her ! 

Thank God, they saved her that." 



282 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

"Art's a fine feller. 

I wish I had his luck. 

Swellin' round in Hart, Schaffner & Marx fancy suits. 

And eatin' in rest'rants. 

But somebody's got to stick to the old place. 

Else Foxfield'd have to shut up shop, 

Hey, Alice?" 

"You admire him ! 

You admire Arthur ! 

You'd be like him only you can't dance. 

Oh, Shame ! Shame ! 

And I've been like that silly girl. 

Fooled with your promises, 

And I give you all I had. 

I knew it, oh, I knew it. 

But I wanted to git away 'fore I proved it. 

You've shamed me through and through. 

Why couldn't you hold your tongue, 

And spared me seein' you 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

As you really are." 

"What the Devil's the row? 

I only said Art was lucky. 

What you spitfirin' at me fer ? 

Ferget it, Alice. 

We've had good times, ain't we ? 

I'll see Cleve 'bout that job agin to-morrer. 

And we'll be married 'fore hayin' time." 

"It's like you to remind me o' hayin' time. 

I've good cause to love it, ain't I ? 

Many's the night I've hid my face in the dark 

To shut out thinkin' !'* 

"AVhy, that ain't nothin*. 

You ain't be'n half so kind to me 

As lots o' fellers' girls. 

Gi' me a kiss. Dear, 

And let's make up." 

''Make up! 

You poor fool. 



284 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Do 3^ou suppose I care a ten cent piece 

For you now. 

You've killed yourself for me. 

Done it out o' your own mouth. 

You've took away my home, 

I hate the sight o' the place. 

You're all over it. 

Every stick an' stone means you. 

An' I hate 'em all." 

"Alice, I say, 

Don't go on like that. 

I can't marry yer 

Boardin' in one room. 

But I'll see Cleve to-morrer, 

I'll make him " 

"Oh, you fool! 
You terrible fool !'* 
"Alice, don't go yit. 
Wait a minit. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 285 

I'll see Cleve " 

"You terrible fool!" 
* Alice, don't go. 
Alice ' ' (Door slams) 



286 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



NUMBER 3 ON THE DOCKET 

The lawyer, are you ? 

Well ! I ain't got nothin' to say. 

Nothin' ! 

I told the perlice I hadn't nothin'. 

They know'd real well 'twas me. 

Ther warn't no supposin', 

Ketchin' me in the woods as they did. 

An' me in my house dress. 

Folks don't walk miles an' miles 

In the drifted snow. 

With no hat nor wrap on 'em 

Ef everythin's all right, I guess. 

All right.? Ha! Ha! Ha! 

Nothin' wam't right with me. 

Never was. 

Oh, Lord! Why did I do it? 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 287 

Why ain't it yesterday, and Ed here agin ? 

Many's the time I've set up with him nights 

When he had cramps, or rheumatizm, or somethin*. 

I used ter nurse him same's ef he was a baby. 

I wouldn't hurt him, I love him ! 

Don't you dare to say I killed him. 'Twarn't me ! 

Somethin' got aholt o' me. I couldn't help it. 

Oh, what shall I do ! What shall I do ! 

Yes, Sir. 

No, Sir. 

I beg your pardon, I — I — 

Oh, I'm a wicked woman ! 

An' I'm desolate, desolate ! 

Why warn't I struck dead or paralyzed 

Afore my hands done it. 

Oh, my God, what shall I do ! 

No, Sir, ther ain't no extenuatin' circumstances. 

An' I don't want none. 

I want a bolt o' lightnin' 



288 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

To strike me dead right now ! 

Oh, I'll tell yer. 

But it won't make no diff'rence. 

Nothin' will. 

Yes, I killed him. 

Why do yer make me say it ? 

It's cruel ! Cruel ! 

I killed him because o' th' silence. 

The long, long silence. 

That watched all around me. 

And he wouldn't break it. 

I tried to make him. 

Time an' agin. 

But he was terrible taciturn, Ed was. 

He never spoke *cept when he had to. 

An' then he'd only say "yes" and "no.'* 

You can't even guess what that silence was. 

I'd hear it whisperin' in my ears. 

An' I got frightened, 'twas so thick. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 289 

An' al'ays comin' back. 
Ef Ed would ha' talked sometimes 
It would ha' driven it away ; 
But he never would. 
He didn't hear it same as I did. 
You see, Sir, 

Our farm was oflf'n the main road. 
And set away back under the mountain ; 
And the village was seven mile off, 
Measurin' after you'd got out o' our lane. 
We didn't have no hired man, 
'Cept in hayin' time ; 
An' Dane's place. 
That was the nearest, 
Was clear way 'tother side the mountain. 
They used Marley post-office 
An' ours was Benton. 

Ther was a cart-track took yer to Dane's in Summer, 
An' it warn't above two mile that way, 
u 



290 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

But it warn't never broke out Winters. 

I used to dread the Winters. 

Seem's ef I couldn't abear to see the golden-rod 

bloomin' ; 
Wintered come so quick after that. 
You don't know what snow's like when yer with it 
Day in an' day out. 
Ed would be out all day loggin', 
An' I set at home and look at the snow 
Layin' over everythin' ; 
It 'ud dazzle me blind. 

Till it wam't white any more, but black as ink. 
Then the quiet 'ud commence rushin' past my ears 
Till I most went mad listenin' to it. 
Many's the time I've dropped a pan on the floor 
Jest to hear it clatter. 
I was most frantic when dinner-time come 
An' Ed was back from the woods. 
I'd ha' give my soul to hear him speak. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 291 

But he'd never say a word till I asked him 

Did he like the raised biscuits or whatever. 

An' then sometimes he'd jest nod his answer. 

Then he'd go out agin. 

An' I'd watch him from the kitchin winder. 

It seemed the woods come marchin' out to meet him 

An' the trees 'ud press round him an' hustle him. 

I got so I was scared o' th' trees. 

I thought they come nearer. 

Every day a little nearer, 

Closin' up round the house. 

I never went in t' th' woods Winters, 

Though in Summer I liked 'em well enough. 

It wam't so bad when my little boy was with us. 

He used to go sleddin' and skatin'. 

An' every day his father fetched him to school in the 

pung 
An' brought him back agin. 
We scraped an' scraped fer Neddy, 



292 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

We wanted him to have a education. 

We sent him to High School, 

\n* then he went up to Boston to Technology. 

He was a minin' engineer. 

An' doin' real well, 

A credit to his bringin' up. 

But his very first position ther was an explosion in the 

mine. 
And I'm glad ! I'm glad ! 
He ain't here to see me now. 
Neddy! Neddy! , 
I'm your mother still, Neddy. 
Don't turn from me like that. 
I can't abear it. I can't ! I can't ! 
What did you say ? 
Oh, yes. Sir. 
I'm here. 
I'm very sorry, 
I don't know what I'm sayin*. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 293 

No, Sir, 

Not till after Neddy died. 

'Twas the next Winter the silence come, 

I don't remember noticin' it afore. 

That was five year ago. 

An' it's been gittin' worse an' worse. 

I asked Ed to put in a telephone. 

I thought ef I felt the whisperin' comin' on 

I could ring up some o' th' folks. 

But Ed wouldn't hear of it. 

He said we'd paid so much for Neddy 

We couldn't hardly git along as 'twas. 

An' he never imderstood me wantin' to talk. 

Well, this year was worse'n all the others ; 

We had a terrible spell o' stormy weather. 

An' the snow lay so thick 

You couldn't see the fences even. 

Out o* doors was as flat as the palm o' my hand, 

Ther warn't a hump or a holler 



294 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Fer as you could see. 
It was so quiet 

The snappin' o' the branches back in the wood-lot 
Sounded like pistol shots. 
Ed was out all day- 
Same as usual. 

An' it seemed he talked less'n ever. 
He didn't even say * Good-mornin'/ once or twice. 
An' jest nodded or shook his head when I asked him 

things. 
On Monday he said he'd got to go over to Benton 
Fer some oats. 

I'd oughter ha' gone with him. 
But 'twas washin' day 
An' I was afeared the fine weather'd break. 
An' I couldn't do my dry in'. 
All my life I'd done my work punctual. 
An' I couldn't fix my conscience 
To go junketin' on a washin'- day. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 295 

I can*t tell you what that day was to me. 

It dragged an' dragged, 

Fer ther warn't no Ed ter break it in the middle 

Fer dinner. 

Every time I stopped stirrin' the water 

I heerd the whisperin' all about me. 

I stopped oftener'n I should 

To see ef 'twas still ther. 

An' it al'ays was. 

An' gittin' louder 

It seemed ter me. 

Once I threw up the winder to feel the wind. 

That seemed most alive somehow. 

But the woods looked so kind of menacin* 

I closed it quick 

An' started to mangle's hard's I could. 

The squeakin' was comfortin*. 

Well, Ed come home 'bout four, 

I seen him down the road. 



296 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

An' I run out through the shed inter th' barn 

To meet him quicker. 

I hollered out, * Hullo!' 

But he didn't say nothin'. 

He jest drove right in 

An' climbed out o' th' sleigh 

An' commenced unharnessin'. 

I asked him a heap o' questions ; 

Who he'd seed 

An' what he'd done. 

Once in a while he'd nod or shake. 

But most o' th' time he didn't do nothin*. 

*Twas gittin' dark then. 

An' I was in a state. 

With the loneliness 

An' Ed payin' no attention 

Like somethin' warn't livin*. 

All of a sudden it come, 

I don't know what. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 297 

But I jest couldn't stand no more. 

It didn't seem 's though that was Ed, 

An' it didn't seem as though I was me. 

I had to break a way out somehow, 

Somethin' was closin' in 

An' I was stiflin'. 

Ed's loggin' axe was ther. 

An' I took it. 

Oh, my God ! 

I can't see nothin' else afore me all the time. 

I run out inter th' woods. 

Seemed as ef they was puUin' me ; 

An' all the time I was wadin' through the snow 

I seed Ed in front of me 

Where I'd laid him. 

An' I see him now. 

There ! There ! 

What you holdin* me f er ? 

I want ter go to Ed, 



298 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

He's bleedin'. 
Stop holdin' me. 
I got to go. 
I'm comin*, Ed. 
I'll be ther in a minit. 
Oh, I'm so tired ! 
(Faints) 



CLOCKS TICK A CENTURY 



NIGHTMARE: A TALE FOR AN 
AUTUMN EVENING 

After a Print by George Cruikshank 

It was a gusty night, 
With the wind booming, and swooping. 
Looping round comers. 
Sliding over the cobble-stones. 
Whipping and veering. 
And careering over the roofs 
Like a thousand clattering horses. 
Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city, 
Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait. 
And the wind played ball with Mr. Spruggins 
And laughed as it whistled past him. 
It rolled him along the street. 

With his little feet pit-a-patting on the flags of the 
sidewalk, 



302 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And his muffler and his coat-tails blown straight out 

behind him. 
It bumped him against area railings. 
And chuckled in his ear when he said "Ouch !'* 
Sometimes it lifted liim clear off his little patting feet 
And bore him in triumph over three grey flagstones 

and a quarter. 
The moon dodged in and out of clouds, winking. 
It was all very unpleasant for Mr. Spruggins, 
And when the wind flung him hard against his own 

front door 
It was a relief, 

Although the breath was quite knocked out of him. 
The gas-lamp in front of the house flared up. 
And the keyhole was as big as a barn door ; 
The gas-lamp flickered away to a sputtering blue 

star. 
And the keyhole went out with it. 
Such a stabbing, and jabbing. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 303 

And sticking, and picking. 

And poking, and pushing, and prying 

With that key; 

And there is no denying that Mr. Spruggins rapped 

out an oath or two. 
Rub-a-dub-dubbing them out to a real snare-drum 

roll. 
But the door opened at last. 

And Mr. Spruggins blew through it into his own hall 
And slammed the door to so hard 
That the knocker banged five times before it stopped. 
Mr. Spruggins struck a light and lit a candle. 
And all the time the moon winked at him through the 

window. 
"Why couldn't you find the keyhole, Spruggins?" 
Taunted the wind. 
**I can find the keyhole.'* 
And the wind, thin as a wire. 
Darted in and seized the candle flame 



304 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And knocked it over to one side 

And pummelled it down — down — down — ! 

But Mr. Spruggins held the candle so close that it 
singed his chin. 

And ran and stumbled up the stairs in a surprisingly 
agile manner. 

For the wind through the keyhole kept saying, 
"Spruggins ! Spruggins !" behind him. 

The fire in his bedroom burned brightly. 

The room with its crimson bed and window curtains 

Was as red and glowing as a carbuncle. 

It was still and warm. 

There was no wind here, for the windows were fas- 
tened ; 

And no moon. 

For the curtains were drawn. 

The candle flame stood up like a pointed pear 

In a wide brass dish. 

Mr. Spruggins sighed with content ; 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 305 

He was safe at home. 

The fire glowed — red and yellow roses 

In the black basket of the grate — 

And the bed with its crimson hangings 

Seemed a great peony. 

Wide open and placid. 

Mr. Spruggins slipped off his top-coat and his muffler. 

He slipped off his bottle-green coat 

And his flowered waistcoat. 

He put on a flannel dressing-gown, 

And tied a peaked night-cap under his chin. 

He wound his large gold watch 

And placed it under his pillow. 

Then he tiptoed over to the window and pulled back 

the curtain. 
There was the moon dodging in and out of the clouds ; 
But behind him was his quiet candle. 
There was the wind whisking along the street. 
The window rattled, but it was fastened. 



306 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Did the wind say, "Spruggins"? 

All Mr. Spruggins heard was *' S-s-s-s-s — ** 

Dying away down the street. 

He dropped the curtain and got into bed. 

Martha had been in the last thing with the warming- 
pan; 

The bed was warm. 

And Mr. Spruggins sank into feathers. 

With the familiar ticking of his watch just under his 
head. 

Mr. Spruggins dozed. 

He had forgotten to put out the candle. 

But it did not make much difference as the fire was 
so bright . . . 

Too bright ! 

The red and yellow roses pricked his eyelids. 

They scorched him back to consciousness. 

He tried to shift his position ; 

He could not move. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 307 

Something weighed him down. 

He could not breathe. 

He was gasping. 

Pinned down and suffocating. 

He opened his eyes. 

The curtains of the window were flung back. 

The fire and the candle were out. 

And the room was filled with green moonlight. 

And pressed against the window-pane 

Was a wide, round face. 

Winking — winking — 

Solemnly dropping one eyelid after the other. 

Tick — tock — went the watch under his pilloWj, 

Wink — wink — went the face at the window. 

It was not the fire roses which had pricked him. 

It was the winking eyes. 

Mr. Spruggins tried to bounce up ; 

He could not, because — 

His heart flapped up into his mouth 



308 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And fell back dead. 

On his chest was a fat pink pig. 

On the pig a blackamoor 

With a ten pound weight for a cap. 

His mustachios kept curling up and down like angry 

snakes. 
And his eyes rolled round and round. 
With the pupils coming into sight, and disappearing. 
And appearing again on the other side. 
The holsters at his saddle-bow were two port bottles. 
And a curved table-knife hung at his belt for a scimitar. 
While a fork and a keg of spirits were strapped to the 

saddle behind. 
He dug his spurs into the pig. 
Which trampled and snorted. 
And stamped its cloven feet deeper into Mr. Sprug- 

gins. 
Then the green light on the floor began to undulate. 
It heaved and hollowed, 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 309 

It rose like a tide. 

Sea-green, 

Full of claws and scales 

And wriggles. 

The air above his bed began to move ; 

It weighed over liim 

In a mass of draggled feathers. 

Not one hf ted to stir the air. 

They drooped and dripped 

With a smell of port wine and brandy. 

Closing down, slowly. 

Trickling drops on the bed-quilt. 

Suddenly the window fell in with a great scatter of 

glass. 
And the moon burst into the room. 
Sizzling — " S-s-s-s-s — Spruggins ! Spruggins ! '* 
It rolled toward him, 
A green ball of flame. 
With two eyes in the center. 



SIO MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

A red eye and a yellow eye. 

Dropping their lids slowly. 

One after the other. 

Mr. Spruggins tried to scream. 

But the blackamoor 

Leapt oflf his pig 

With a cry. 

Drew his scimitar. 

And plunged it into Mr. Spruggins's mouth. 

Mr. Spruggins got up in the cold dawn 

And remade the fire. 

Then he crept back to bed 

By the light which seeped in under the window cur- 
tains. 

And lay there, shivering, 

While the bells of St. George the Martyr chimed the 
quarter after seven. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 311 



THE PAPER WINDMILL 

The little boy pressed his face against the window- 
pane and looked out at the bright sunshiny morning. 
The cobble-stones of the square glistened like mica. 
In the trees, a breeze danced and pranced, and shook 
drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the 
brown water of the canal. Down stream slowly 
drifted a long string of galliots piled with crimson 
cheeses. The little boy thought they looked as if 
they were roc's eggs, blocks of big ruby eggs. He 
said, " Oh ! '* with delight, and pressed against the 
window with all his might. 

The golden cock on the top of the Stadhuis gleamed. 
His beak was open like a pair of scissors and a narrow 
piece of blue sky was wedged in it. " Cock-a-doodle- 
do," cried the little boy. " Can't you hear me through 



S12 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

the window. Gold Cocky ? Cock-a-doodle-do ! You 
should crow when you see the eggs of your cousin, the 
great roc.'* But the golden cock stood stock still, with 
his fine tail blowing in the wind. He could not under- 
stand the little boy, for he said " Cocorico^* when he said 
anything. But he was hung in the air to swing, not 
to sing. His eyes glittered to the bright West wind, 
and the crimson cheeses drifted away down the canal. 

It was very dull there in the big room. Outside 
in the square, the wind was playing tag with some 
fallen leaves. A man passed, with a dogcart beside 
him full of smart, new milkcans. They rattled out a 
gay tune: *' Tiddity-tum-ti-ti. Have some milk for 
your tea. Cream for your coffee to drink to-night, 
tliick, and smooth, and sweet, and white," and the 
man's sabots beat an accompaniment : "Plop ! trop ! 
milk for your tea. Plop! trop! drink it to-night.' 
It was very pleasant out there, but it was lonely hero 
in the big room. The little boy gulped at a tear. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 313 

It was queer how dull all his toys were. They were 
so still. Nothing was still in the square. If he took 
his eyes away a moment it had changed. The milk- 
man had disappeared round the corner, there was 
only an old woman with a basket of green stuflf on her 
head, picking her way over the shiny stones. But the 
wind pulled the leaves in the basket this way and 
that, and displayed them to beautiful advantage. 
The sun patted them condescendingly on their flat 
surfaces, and they seemed sprinkled with silver. The 
little boy sighed as he looked at his disordered toys 
on the floor. They were motionless, and their col- 
ours were dull. The dark wainscoting absorbed the 
sun. There was none left for toys. 

The square was quite empty now. Only the wind 
ran round and round it, spinning. Away over in 
the corner where a street opened into the square, the 



314 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

wind had stopped. Stopped running, that is, for it 
never stopped spinning. It whirred, and whirled, 
and gyrated, and turned. It burned like a great 
coloured sun. It hummed, and buzzed, and sparked, 
and darted. There were flashes of blue, and long 
smearing lines of saffron, and quick jabs of green. 
And over it all was a sheen like a myriad cut dia- 
monds. Round and round it went, the huge wind- 
wheel, and the little boy's head reeled with watching 
it. The whole square was filled with its rays, blaz- 
ing and leaping round after one another, faster and 
faster. The little boy could not speak, he could only 
gaze, staring in amaze. 

The wind-wheel was coming down the square. 
Nearer and nearer it came, a great disk of spinning 
flame. It was opposite the window now, and the 
little boy could see it plainly, but it was something 
more than the wind which he saw. A man was carry- 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS SI 5 

ing a huge fan-shaped frame on his shoulder, and 
stuck in it were many little painted paper windmills, 
each one scurrying round in the breeze. They were 
bright and beautiful, and the sight was one to please 
anybody, and how much more a little boy who had 
only stupid, motionless toys to enjoy. 

The little boy clapped his hands, and his eyes 
danced and whizzed, for the circling windmills made 
him dizzy. Closer and closer came the windmill 
man, and held up his big fan to the little boy in the 
window of the Ambassador's house. Only a pane 
of glass between the boy and the windmills. They 
slid round before his eyes in rapidly revolving splen- 
dour. There were wheels and wheels of colours — 
big, little, thick, thin — all one clear, perfect spin. 
The windmill vendor dipped and raised them again, 
and the little boy's face was glued to the window- 
pane. Oh ! What a glorious, wonderful plaything ! 



Si 6 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Rings and rings of windy colour always moving ! 
How had any one ever preferred those other toys 
which never stirred. "Nursie, come quickly. Look ! 
I want a windmill. See ! It is never still. You will 
buy me one, won't you.'^ I want that silver one, 
with the big ring of blue.'* 

So a servant was sent to buy that one; silver, 
ringed with blue, and smartly it twirled about in the 
servant's hands as he stood a moment to pay the 
vendor. Then he entered the house, and in another 
minute he was standing in the nursery door, with 
some crumpled paper on the end of a stick which he 
held out to the little boy. "But I wanted a windmill 
which went round," cried the little boy. "That is 
the one you asked for. Master Charles," Nursie was 
a bit impatient, she had mending to do. "See, it is 
silver, and here is the blue." "But it is only a blue 
streak," sobbed the little boy. "I wanted a blue ring. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 317 

and this silver doesn't sparkle." "Well, Master 
Charles, that is what you wanted, now run away and 
play with it, for I am very busy." 

The little boy hid his tears against the friendly 
window-pane. On the floor lay the motionless, 
crumpled bit of paper on the end of its stick. But 
far away across the square was the windmill vendor, 
with his big wheel of whirring splendour. It spun 
round in a blaze like a whirling rainbow, and the sun 
gleamed upon it, and the wind whipped it, until it 
seemed a maze of spattering diamonds. *' Cocoricor* 
crowed the golden cock on the top of the Stadhuis. 
"That is something worth crowing for." But the 
little boy did not hear him, he was sobbing over the 
crumpled bit of paper on the floor. 



318 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



THE RED LACQUER MUSIC-STAND 

A MUSIC-STAND of crimson lacquer, long since brought 
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly 

wrought 
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blacken- 
ing gold. 
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled 
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirl- 
ing, curling. 
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and 

swirhng 
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and 

streams ; 
Petals and apples in high relief, and where the seams 
Are worn with handling, through the polished crim- 
son sheen. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 319 

Long streaks of black, the under lacquer, shine out 

clean. 
Four desks, adjustable, to suit the heights of playerji. 
Sitting to viols or standing up to sing, four laj^ers 
Of music to serve every instrument, are there. 
And on the apex a large flat-topped golden pear. 
It burns in red and yellow, dusty, smouldering lights. 
When the sun flares the old barn-chamber with its 

flights 
And skips upon the crystal knobs of dim sideboards. 
Legless and mouldy, and hops, glint to glint, on 

hoards 
Of scythes, and spades, and dinner-horns, so the old 

tools 
Are little candles throwing brightness round in pools. 
With Oriental splendour, red and gold, the dust 
Covering its flames like smoke and thinning as a gust 
Of brighter sunshine makes the colours leap and 

range. 



820 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

The strange old music-stand seems to strike out and 
change ; 

To stroke and tear the darkness with sharp golden 
claws ; 

To dart a forked, vermilion tongue from open jaws ; 

To puff out bitter smoke which chokes the sun ; and 
fade 

Back to a still, faint outline obliterate in shade. 

Creeping up the ladder into the loft, the Boy 

Stands watching, very still, prickly and hot with joy. 

He sees the dusty sun-mote slit by streaks of red. 

He sees it split and stream, and all about his head 

Spikes and spears of gold are licking, pricking, flick- 
ing, 

Scratching against the walls and furniture, and nick- 
ing 

The darkness into sparks, chipping away the gloom. 

The Boy's nose smarts with the pungence in the 
room. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 321 

The wind pushes an elm branch from before the door 
And the smi widens out all along the floor. 
Filling the barn-chamber with white, straightfor- 
ward light. 
So not one blurred outline can tease the mind to 
fright. 

** All ye Works of the Lord, Bless ye the Lord; 
Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever, 

let the Earth Bless the Lord; Yea, let it Praise 
Him, and Magnify Him for ever. 

ye Mountains and Hills, Bless ye the Lord; Praise 
Him, and Magnify Him for ever. 

All ye Green Things upon the Earth, Bless ye the 
Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever.** 

The Boy will praise his God on an altar builded fair, 
Will heap it with the Works of the Lord. In the 
morning air, 

Y 



322 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Spices shall burn on it, and by their pale smoke curled. 
Like shoots of all the Green Things, the God of this 

bright World 
Shall see the Boy's desire to pay his debt of praise. 
The Boy turns round about, seeking with careful gaze 
An altar meet and worthy, but each table and chair 
Has some defect, each piece is needing some repair 
To perfect it ; the chairs have broken legs and backs. 
The tables are uneven, and every highboy lacks 
A handle or a drawer, the desks are bruised and worn. 
And even a wide sofa has its cane seat torn. 
Only in the gloom far in the corner there 
The lacquer music-stand is elegant and rare. 
Clear and slim of line, with its four wings outspread. 
The sound of old quartets, a tenuous, faint thread. 
Hanging and floating over it, it stands supreme — 
Black, and gold, and crimson, in one twisted scheme ! 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 323 

A candle on the bookcase feels a draught and wavers, 
Stippling the white-washed walls with dancing shades 

and quavers. 
A bed-post, grown colossal, jigs about the ceiling. 
And shadows, strangely altered, stain the walls, reveal- 
ing 
Eagles, and rabbits, and weird faces pulled av.ry, 
And hands which fetch and carry things incessantly. 
Under the Eastern window, where the morning sun 
Must touch it, stands the music-stand, and on each one 
Of its broad platforms is a pyramid of stones. 
And metals, and dried flowers, and pine and hemlock 

cones. 
An oriole's nest with the four eggs neatly blown. 
The rattle of a rattlesnake, and three large brown 
Butternuts uncracked, six butterflies impaled 
With a green luna moth, a snake-skin freshly scaled. 
Some sunflower seeds, wampum, and a bloody-tooth 
shell. 



324 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

A blue jay feather, all together piled pell-mell 
The stand will hold no more. The Boy with hum- 
ming head 
Looks once again, blows out the light, and creeps to 
bed. 

The Boy keeps solemn vigil, while outside the wind 
Blows gustily and clear, and slaps against the blind. 
He hardly tries to sleep, so sharp his ecstasy 
It burns his soul to emptiness, and sets it free 
For adoration only, for worship. Dedicate, 
His imsheathed soul is naked in its novitiate. 
The hours strike below from the clock on the stair. 
The Boy is a white flame suspiring in prayer. 
Morning will bring the sun, the Golden Eye of Him 
Whose splendour must be veiled by starry cherubim. 
Whose Feet shimmer like crystal in the streets of 

Heaven. 
Like an open rose the sun will stand up even. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 325 

Fronting the window-sill, and when the casement 

glows 
Rose-red with the new-blown morning, then the fire 

which flows 
From the sun will fall upon the altar and ignite 
The spices, and his sacrifice will burn in perfumed 

light. 
Over the music-stand the ghosts of sounds will swim. 
Viols d'amore and hautbois accorded to a hymn. 
The Boy will see the faintest breath of angels' wings 
Fanning the smoke, and voices will flower through 

the strings. 
He dares no farther vision, and with scalding eyes 
Waits upon the daylight and his great emprise. 

The cold, grey light of dawn was whitening the wall 
When the Boy, fine-drawn by sleeplessness, started 

his ritual. 
He washed, all shivering and pointed like a flame. 



326 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

He threw the shutters open, and in the window-frame 
The morning glimmered like a tarnished Venice glass. 
He took his Chinese pastilles and put them in a mass 
Upon the mantelpiece till he could seek a plate 
Worthy to hold them burning. Alas ! He had been 

late 
In tliinking of this need, and now he could not find 
Platter or saucer rare enough to ease his mind. 
The house was not astir, and he dared not go down 
Into the barn-chamber, . lest some door should be 

blown 
And slam before the draught he made as he went out. 
The light was growing yellower, and still he looked 

about. 
A flash of almost crimson from the gilded pear 
Upon the music-stand, startled him waiting there. 
The sun would rise and he would meet it unprepared. 
Labelled a fool in having missed what he had dared. 
He ran across the room, took his pastilles and laid 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 327 

Them on the flat-topped pear, most carefully dis« 

played 
To light with ease, then stood a little to one side, 
Focussed a burning-glass and painstakingly tried 
To hold it angled so the bunched and prismed rays 
Should leap upon each other and spring into a blaze. 
Sharp as a wheeling edge of disked, carnation flame, 
Gem-hard and cutting upward, slowly the round sun 

came. 
The arrowed fire caught the burning-glass and 

glanced. 
Split to a multitude of pointed spears, and lanced, 
A deeper, hotter flame, it took the incense pile 
Which welcomed it and broke into a little smile 
Of yellow flamelets, creeping, crackling, thrusting up, 
A golden, red-slashed lily in a lacquer cup. 

*' ye Fire and Heat, Bless ye the Lord; Praise 
Him, and Magnify Him j&r ever. 



S28 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

ye Winter and Summer, Bless ye the Lord; Praise 
Him, and Magnify Him for ever. 

ye Nights and Days, Bless ye the Lord; Praise 
Him, and Magnify Him for ever. 

ye Lightnings and Clouds, Bless ye the Lord; 
Praise Him, and Magnify Him for ever'' 

A moment so it hung, wide-curved, bright-petalled, 

seeming 
A chalice foamed with sunrise. The Boy woke from 

his dreaming. 
A spike of flame had caught the card of butterflies. 
The oriole's nest took fire, soon all four galleries 
Where he had spread his treasures were become one 

tongue 
Of gleaming, brutal fire. The Boy instantly swung 
His pitcher off the wash-stand and turned it upside 

down. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 329 

The flames drooped back and sizzled, and all his senses 

grown 
Acute by fear, the Boy grabbed the quilt from his bed 
And flung it over all, and then with aching head 
He watched the early sunshine glint on the remains 
Of his holy offering. The lacquer stand had stains 
Ugly and charred all over, and where the golden pear 
Had been, a deep, black hole gaped miserably. His 

dear 
Treasures were puffs of ashes; only the stones were 

there, 
Winking in the brightness. 

The clock upon the stair 
Struck five, and in the kitchen someone shook a grate. 
The Boy began to dress, for it was getting late. 



330 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



SPRING DAY 

Bath 

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a 
smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. 

The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window 
and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes 
and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water 
into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light. 

Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the 
water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble 
deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets 
them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes 
of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and 
let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, 
flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, 
the green water covers me from the too bright day. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 831 

I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the 
sun spots. 

The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the 
window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus 
in the air. 

Breakfast Table 
In the fresh-washed sunlight, the breakfast table 
is decked and white. It offers itself in flat surrender, 
tendering tastes, and smells, and colours, and metals, 
and grains, and the white cloth falls over its side, 
draped and wide. Wheels of white glitter in the 
silver coffee-pot, hot and spinning like catherine- 
wheels, they whirl, and twirl — and my eyes begin 
to smart, the Uttle white, dazzling wheels prick them 
like darts. Placid and peaceful, the rolls of bread 
spread themselves in the sun to bask. A stack of 
butter-pats, pyramidal, shout orange through the 
white, scream, flutter, call: "Yellow! Yellow! 
Yellow !" Coffee steam rises in a stream, clouds the 



S32 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

silver tea-service with mist, and twists up into the 
sunlight, revolved, involuted, suspiring higher and 
higher, fluting in a thin spiral up the high blue sky. 
A crow flies by and croaks at the coffee steam. The 
day is new and fair with good smells in the air. 

Walk 

Over the street the white clouds meet, and sheer 
away without touching. 

On the sidewalks, boys are playing marbles. Glass 
marbles, with amber and blue hearts, roll together 
and part with a sweet clashing noise. The boys 
strike them with black and red striped agates. The 
glass marbles spit crimson when they are hit, and slip 
into the gutters under rushing brown water. I 
smell tulips and narcissus in the air, but there are no 
flowers anywhere, only white dust whipping up the 
street, and a girl with a gay Spring hat and blowing 
skirts. The dust and the wind flirt at her ankles 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 333 

and her neat, high-heeled patent leather shoes. Tap, 
tap, the little heels pat the pavement, and the wind 
ustles among the flowers on her hat. 

A water-cart crawls slowly on the other side of the 
way. It is green and gay with new paint, and rumbles 
contentedly, sprinkling clear water over the white 
dust. Clear zigzagging water, which smells of tulips 
and narcissus. 

The thickening branches make a pink grisaille 
against the blue sky. 

Whoop ! The clouds go dashing at each other and 
sheer away just in time. Whoop ! And a man's hat 
careers down the street in front of the white dust, 
leaps into the branches of a tree, veers away and 
trundles ahead of the wind, jarring the sunlight into 
spokes of rose-colour and green. 

A motor-car cuts a swathe through the bright air, 
sharp-beaked, irresistible, shouting to the wind to 
make way. A glare of dust and sunshine tosses 



334 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

together behind it, and settles down. The sky is 
quiet and high, and the morning is fair with fresh- 
washed air. 

Midday and Afternoon 
Swirl of crowded streets. Shock and recoil of 
traffic. The stock-still brick fagade of an old church, 
against which the waves of people lurch and with- 
draw. Flare of sunshine down side-streets. Eddies 
of light in the windows of chemists' shops, with their 
blue, gold, purple jars, darting colours far into the 
crowd. Loud bangs and tremors, murmurings out of 
high windows, whirring of machine belts, blurring of 
horses and motors. A quick spin and shudder of 
brakes on an electric car, and the jar of a church- 
bell knocking against the metal blue of the sky. I 
am a piece of the town, a bit of blown dust, thrust 
along with the crowd. Proud to feel the pavement 
under me, reeling with feet. Feet tripping, skipping, 
lagging, dragging, plodding doggedly, or springing up 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 335 

and advancing on firm elastic insteps. A boy is 
selling papers, I smell them clean and new from the 
press. They are fresh like the air, and pungent as 
tulips and narcissus. 

The blue sky pales to lemon, and great tongues of 
gold blind the shop-windows, putting out their con- 
tents in a flood of flame. 

Night and Sleep 
The day takes her ease in slippered yellow. Elec- 
tric signs gleam out along the shop fronts, following 
each other. They grow, and grow, and blow into 
patterns of fire-flowers as the sky fades. Trades 
scream in spots of light at the unruffled night. 
Twinkle, jab, snap, that means a new play; and 
over the way : plop, drop, quiver, is the sidelong sliver 
of a watchmaker's sign with its length on another 
street. A gigantic mug of beer effervesces to the 
atmosphere over a tall building, but the sky is high 
and has her own stars, why should she heed ours ? 



S36 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

I leave the city with speed. Wheels whirl to take 
Tne back to my trees and my quietness. The breeze 
which blows with me is fresh-washed and clean, it has 
come but recently from the high sky. There are no 
flowers in bloom yet, but the earth of my garden 
smells of tulips and narcissus. 

My room is tranquil and friendly. Out of the 
window I can see the distant city, a band of twink- 
ling gems, little flower-heads with no stems. I can- 
not see the beer-glass, nor the letters of the restau- 
rants and shops I passed, now the signs blur and all 
together make the city, glowing on a night of fine 
weather, like a garden stirring and blowing for the 
Spring. 

The night is fresh-washed and fair and there is a 
whiff of flowers in the air. 

Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour your blue 
and purple dreams into my ears. The breeze whis- 
pers at the shutters and mutters queer tales of old 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 337 

days, and cobbled streets, and youths leaping their 
horses down marble stairways. Pale blue lavender, 
you are the colour of the sky when it is fresh-washed 
and fair ... I smell the stars . . . they are like 
tulips and narcissus ... I smell them in the air. 



338 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

THE DINNER-PARTY 

Fish 
"So . . ." they said. 
With their wine-glasses delicately poised. 
Mocking at the thing they cannot understand. 
"So . . ." they said again. 
Amused and insolent. 
The silver on the table glittered. 
And the red wine in the glasses 
Seemed the blood I had wasted 
In a foolish cause. 

Game 
The gentleman with the grey-and-black whiskers 
Sneered languidly over his quail. 
Then my heart flew up and laboured, ^ 
And I burst from my own holding 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 339 

And hurled myself forward. 

With straight blows I beat upon him. 

Furiously, with red-hot anger, I thrust against him. 

But my weapon sUthered over his polished surface. 

And I recoiled upon myself. 

Panting. 

Dra wing-Room 
In a dress all softness and half-tones. 
Indolent and half-reclined. 
She lay upon a couch. 
With the firelight reflected in her jewels. 
But her eyes had no reflection. 
They swam in a grey smoke. 
The smoke of smouldering ashes. 
The smoke of her cindered heart. 

Coffee 
They sat in a circle with their coffee-cups. 
One dropped in a lump of sugar. 



340 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

One stirred with a spoon. 

I saw them as a circle of ghosts 

Sipping blackness out of beautiful china. 

And mildly protesting against my coarseness 

In being alive. 

Talk 
They took dead men's souls 
And pinned them on their breasts for ornament ; 
Their cuff-links and tiaras 
Were gems dug from a grave ; 

They were ghouls battening on exhumed thoughts ; 
And I took a green liqueur from a servant 
So that he might come near me 
And give me the comfort of a living thing. 

Eleven O 'Clock 
The front door was hard and heavy. 
It shut behind me on the house of ghosts. 
I flattened my feet on the pavement 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 341 

To feel it solid under me ; 

I ran my hand along the railings 

And shook them. 

And pressed their pointed bars 

Into my palms. 

The hurt of it reassured me. 

And I did it again and again 

Until they were bruised. 

When I woke in the night 

I laughed to find them aching. 

For only living flesh can suffero 



342 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



STRAVINSKY'S THREE PIECES 

"GROTESQUES," 

FOR STRING QUARTET 

First Movement 
Thin-voiced, nasal pipes 
Drawing sound out and out 
Until it is a screeching thread. 
Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting. 
It hurts. 
Whee-e-e ! 

Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump ! 
There are drums here. 
Banging, 

And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones 
Of the market-place. 
Whee-e-e ! 
Sabots slapping the worn, old stones. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 843 

And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones ; 

Clumsy and hard they are, 

And uneven. 

Losing half a beat 

Because the stones are slippery. 

Bump-e-ty-tong ! Whee-e-e ! Tong ! 

The thin Spring leaves 

Shake to the banging of shoes. 

Shoes beat, slap. 

Shuffle, rap. 

And the nasal pipes squeal with their pigs' voices. 

Little pigs' voices 

Weaving among the dancers, 

A fine white thread 

Linking up the dancers. 

Bang ! Bump ! Tong ! 

Petticoats, 

Stockings, 

Sabots, 



344 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Delirium flapping its thigh-bones ; 

Red, blue, yellow, 

Drunkenness steaming in colours ; 

Red, yellow, blue. 

Colours and flesh weaving together, 

In and out, with the dance. 

Coarse stuffs and hot flesh weaving together. 

Pigs* cries white and tenuous. 

White and painful. 

White and — 

Bump! 

Tong! 



men, women and ghosts 345 

Second Movement 
Pale violin music whiflFs across the moon, 
A pale smoke of violin music blows over the moon. 
Cherry petals fall and flutter. 
And the white Pierrot, 
Wreathed in the smoke of the violins. 
Splashed with cherry petals falling, falling. 
Claws a grave for himself in the fresh earth 
With his finger-nails. 

Third Movement 
An organ growls in the heavy roof-groins of a 

church. 
It wheezes and coughs. 
The nave is blue with incense. 
Writhing, twisting, 
Snaking over the heads of the chanting priests. 

Requiem ceternam dona ei, Domine; 
The priests whine their bastard Latin 



346 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

And the censers swing and click. 

The priests walk endlessly 

Round and round. 

Droning their Latin 

Off the key. 

The organ crashes out in a flaring chord. 

And the priests hitch their chant up ha^f a tone. 

Dies ilia, dies irce, 

Calamitatis et miserice. 

Dies magna et amara valde. 
A wind rattles the leaded windows. 
The little pear-shaped candle flames leap and flutter. 

Dies ilia, dies iros; 
The swaying smoke drifts over the altar, 

Calamitatis et miserice; 
The shuffling priests sprinkle holy water. 

Dies magna et amara valde; 
And there is a stark stillness in the midst of them 
Stretched upon a bier. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 347 

His ears are stone to the organ. 

His eyes are flint to the candles. 

His body is ice to the water. 

Chant, priests, 

Whine, shuffle, genuflect. 

He will always be as rigid as he is now 

Until he crumbles away in a dust heap. 

Lacrymosa dies iUa, 

Qua resurget ex favilla 

Jvdicandus homo reus. 
Above the grey pillars the roof is in darkness. 



34 8 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 



TOWNS IN COLOUR 

I 
RED SLIPPERS 

Red slippers in a shop-window, and outside in the 
street, flaws of grey, windy sleet ! 

Behind the polished glass, the slippers hang in long 
threads of red, festooning from the ceiling like sta- 
lactites of blood, flooding the eyes of passers-by with 
dripping colour, jamming their crimson reflections 
against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming 
their claret and salmon into the teeth of the sleet, 
plopping their little round maroon lights upon the 
tops of umbrellas. 

The row of white, sparkling shop fronts is gashed 
and bleeding, it bleeds red slippers. They spout 
under the electric light, fluid and fluctuating, a hot 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 349 

rain — and freeze again to red slippers, myriadly 
multiplied in the mirror side of the window. 

They balance upon arched insteps like springing 
bridges of crimson lacquer; they swing up over 
curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked in a wind- 
pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like July ponds, 
flared and burnished by red rockets. 

Snap, snap, they are cracker-sparks of scarlet in 
the white, monotonous block of shops. 

They plunge the clangour of billions of vermilion 
trumpets into the crowd outside, and echo in faint 
rose over the pavement. 

People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a 
window, farther down, is a big lotus bud of cardboard 
whose petals open every few minutes and reveal a 
wax doll, with staring bead eyes and flaxen hair, 
lolling awkwardly in its flower chair. 



350 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a card- 
board lotus bud before? 

The flaws of grey, windy sleet beat on the shop- 
window where there are only red sUppers. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 351 



n 



THOMPSON'S LUNCH ROOM — GRAND 
CENTRAL STATION 

Study in Whites 
Wax-white — 
Floor, ceiling, walls. 
Ivory shadows 
Over the pavement 
Polished to cream surfaces 
By constant sweeping. 
The big room is coloured like the petals 
Of a great magnolia. 
And has a patina 
Of flower bloom 
Which makes it shine dimly 
Under the electric lamps. 
Chairs are ranged in rows 
Like sepia seeds 



352 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Waiting fulfilment. 

The chalk-white spot of a cook's cap 

Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall — 

Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow 

Through the wavering uncertainty of steam. 

Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections. 

Ice-green carboys, shifting — greener, bluer — with 

the jar of moving water. 
Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass 
Rearing snow-peaks of cliipped sugar 
Above the lighthouse-shaped castors 
Of grey pepper and grey-white salt. 
Grey-white placards: "Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, 

Frankfurters" : 
Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines. 
Dropping on the white counter like horn notes 
Through a web of violins. 
The flat yellow lights of oranges, 
The cube-red splashes of apples, 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS S53 

In high plated Spergnes. 

The electric clock jerks every half -minute : 

"Coming! — Past!" 

"Three beef -steaks and a chicken-pie," 

Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily. 

A man carries a china mug of coffee to a distant chair. 

Two rice puddings and a salmon salad 

Are pushed over the counter ; 

The unfulfilled chairs open to receive them. 

A spoon falls upon the floor with the impact of metal 

striking stone. 
And the sound throws across the room 
Sharp, invisible zigzags 
Of silver. 



2a 



354 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

m 

AN OPERA HOUSE 
Within the gold square of the proscenium arch, 
A curtain of orange velvet hangs in stiff folds. 
Its tassels jarring slightly when someone crosses the 

stage behind. 
Gold carving edges the balconies. 
Rims the boxes. 

Runs up and down fluted pillars. 
Little knife-stabs of gold 
Shine out whenever a box door is opened. 
Gold clusters 
Flash in soft explosions 
On the blue darkness. 
Suck back to a point, ' 
And disappear. 
Hoops of gold 
Circle necks, wrists, fingers. 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 355 

Pierce ears. 

Poise on heads 

And fly up above them in coloured sparkles. 

Gold I 

Gold! 

The opera house is a treasure-box of gold. 

Gold in a broad smear across the orchestra pit : 

Gold of horns, trumpets, tubas ; 

Gold — spun-gold, twittering-gold, snapping-gold 

Of harps. 

The conductor raises his baton. 

The brass blares out 

Crass, crude, 

Parvenu, fat, powerful. 

Golden. 

Rich as the fat, clapping hands in the boxes. 

Cymbals, gigantic, coin-shaped, 

Crash. 

The orange curtain parts 



356 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS ' 

And the prima-doima steps forward. 

One note, 

A drop : transparent, iridescent, ; 

A gold bubble. 

It floats . . . floats . . • 

And bursts against the lips of a bank president 

In the grand tier. 



I MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 357 

IV 
AFTERNOON RAIN IN STATE STREET 

Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls. 

Slant lines of black rain 

In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of 

buildings. 
Below, 

Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal. 
The street. 

And over it, umbrellas, 
Black polished dots 
Struck to white 
An instant. 

Stream in two flat lines 

Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil. 
Like a four-sided wedge 
The Custom House Tower 
Pokes at the low, flat sky. 



358 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Pushing it farther and farther up. 

Lifting it away from the house-tops. 

Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin. 

With the lever of its apex. 

The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely. 

Scratching lines of black wire across it. 

Mutilating its perpendicular grey surface 

With the sharp precision of tools. 

The city is rigid with straight lines and angles, 

A chequered table of blacks and greys. 

Oblong blocks of flatness 

Crawl by with low-geared engines. 

And pass to short upright squares 

Shrinking with distance. 

A steamer in the basin blows its whistle. 

And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings, 

A narrow, level bar of steel. 

Hard cubes of lemon 

Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 359 

As the windows light up. 
But the lemon cubes are edged with angles 
Upon which they cannot impinge. 
Up, straight, down, straight — square. 
Crumpled grey-white papers 
Blow along the side-walks. 
Contorted, horrible. 
Without curves. 
A horse steps in a puddle. 
And white, glaring water spurts up 
In stiff, outflaring lines. 
Like the rattling stems of reeds. 
The city is heraldic with angles, 
A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable 
And countercoloured bends of rain 
Hung over a four-square civilization. 
When a street lamp comes out, 
I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds 
To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance 
of its globe. 



360 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

V 

AN AQUARIUM 
Streaks of green and yellow iridescence. 
Silver shiftings. 
Rings veering out of rings. 
Silver — gold — 

Grey-green opaqueness sliding down, ' 
With sharp white bubbles 
Shooting and dancing. 
Flinging quickly outward. 
Nosing the bubbles. 
Swallowing them. 
Fish. 

Blue shadows against silver-saffron water. 
The light rippling over them 
In steel-bright tremors. 
Outspread translucent fins 
Flute, fold, and relapse ; 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 861 

The threaded light prints through them on the 

pebbles 
In scarcely tarnished twinklings. 
Curving of spotted spines. 
Slow up-shifts. 
Lazy convolutions : 
Then a sudden swift straightening 
And darting below : 
Oblique grey shadows 
Athwart a pale casement. ' 
Roped and curied, 
Green man-eating eels 
Slumber in undulate rhythms. 
With crests laid horizontal on their backs. 
Barred fish. 
Striped fish. 
Uneven disks of fish. 
Slip, slide, whiri, tiun. 
And never touch. 



362 MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 

Metallic blue fish. 

With fins wide and yellow and swaying 

Like Oriental fans. 

Hold the sun in their bellies 

And glow with light : 

Blue brilliance cut by black bars. 

An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer. 

Across it, in a tangent, 

A smear of rose, black, silver. 

Short twists and upstartings, 

Rose-black, in a setting of bubbles : 

Sunshine playing between red and black flowers 

On a blue and gold lawn. 

Shadows and polished surfaces. 

Facets of mauve and purple, 

A constant modulation of values. 

Shaft-shaped, 

With green bead eyes ; 

Thick-nosed, 



MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS 363 

Heliotrope-coloured ; 

Swift spots of chrysolite and coral ; 

In the midst of green, pearl, amethyst irradiations. 

Outside, 

A willow-tree flickers 

With little white jerks. 

And long blue waves 

Rise steadily beyond the outer islands. 



Printed in the United States of America. 



THE following pages contain advertise- 
ments of books by the same author 



Legends 

By amy LOWELL 



Second Printing 

"I read 'Legends 'last night, and again this morning. I like them the 
best of all your poems. ... I like best Many Swans, which I have read 
twice and which I feel really speaks inside my unexplained soul. I 
should not like to try to explain it, because of the deep fear and danger 
that is in it. But it is n't a myth of the sun, it is something else. All the 
better that we can't say offhand what. That means it is true. It rings a 
note in my soul." — D. H. Lawrence. 

"The subjects fit the poet like a glove. . . . The book is highly original, 
immensely interesting, and in its choice of themes, of the first significance." — 
Prof. John Livingston Lowes in The New York Evening Post. 

" These clever dramatic tales are so brilliantly successful that we can 
only hope for more of their kind. Here is a canvas broad enough for the 
strokes of that untiring brush! Both in subject-matter and technique Miss 
Lowell has surpassed herself in these legends. "— John Farrar in The 
Bookman. 
" Miss Lowell builds — or composes — her poems as well as a painter of 

the first rank Her verse becomes increasingly supple. ... I cannot say 

pompously that this latest volume contains Miss Lowell's best work, but it 

contains her work that I like best She is, at any rate, one of the three 

graces or nine muses upon whom our poetry stands or falls." — Malcolm 
Cowley in The Dial. 

" There is no writer in America to-day, of either prose or poetry, who 
can manage such brilliant color effects in description. ... In ' Legends' 
she has produced weirdly beautiful work that could never by any possi- 
bility be mistaken for the work of anyone else." — William Rose Benet 
in The Yale Review. 

" ' Legends' is, I think, Miss Lowell's best book . . . the book that achieves 
the idiom, the convention that makes her work integral." — Padraic Colum 
in The Freeman. 



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Pictures of the Floating World 

By amy LOWELL 

Fourth edition 

" The heart of the volume is a garden. . . . The book is as local as the 
* Hesperides,' and as deeply pervaded by the spell of the genius of a place. 
. . . The beauty that knocks at the gates of the senses lies on page after page 
with a clarity and an almost radiant succinctness for which I know few 
parallels. . . • Surpassing and (I think) enduring beauty." — Professor 
John Livingston Lowes in The Boston Transcript. 

" It is a book of impressions, fleeting and delicate, yet keenly and vividly 
defined. . . . Here we have imagism at its best; a lovely gesture caught at its 
highest curve of grace, symbolizing a universal emotion. . . . Originality 
and individuality are precious qualities, and Miss Lowell possesses them 
beyond any other living poet we can think of." — N. Y. Times Book Review. 

" There is a riot of fancy here, a confused luxuriance as rich and tropical 
as the garden which seems to be the centre of Miss Lowell's lyric inspira- 
tion. ... A lyrical undertone pervades even the least musical of the poems 
in the introspective section excellently entitled 'Plummets to Circumstance/ 
and a dramatic touch intensifies them. Miss Lowell makes even the most 
casual descriptions ... an adventure in excitement. With its multiform 
interest, its increase in human warmth, and, above all, with its rich mingling 
of personality and pattern-making, 'Pictures of the Floating World' may 
well come to be Miss Lowell's most popular book." — Louis Untermeyer 
in The New York Evening Post. 

"There is a soft enchanted quietness blown about 'Lacquer Prints,' 
drenched as they are with the influence of Japan till they crust to a porce- 
lain frailer than the lining of a bird's egg, or the flushed enamel of a sea- 
buried shell. Life and movement are subdued to a thin stem holding an 
open flower. They are pure colour expressed in curving lines drawn over 
thoughts so intimate they shrink, even in reading, back to solitude. Pro- 
found and lovely. . . . That is it. The offering of her own vision to unob- 
servant eyes, the breaking of innumerable barriers, for, among all poets. 
Miss Lowell is essentially an explorer." — W.^Bryher in The Art of Amy 
Lowell. A Critical Appreciation. London. 

" In ' The Floating World ' . . . Amy Lowell has shown us again that she 
can make a thick volume of verse as entertaining as a book of pictures. 
She makes pictures in verse again and again, and all her pictures are in- 
vested with a touch of human passion or fantasy." — The New Republic. 



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Can Grande's Castle 

By amy LOWELL 

Fifth Printing 

f kI'J^* poems in ' Can Grande's Castle ' are only four in number, but two of 
them . . . touch magmficence. The Bronze Horses ' has a larger sweep than 
ffm.'/;°T-" ^^' ^-^^ attempted; she achieves here a sense of magnitude and 
time that is amazmg ... Not in all contemporary poetry has the quality of 
balance and return been so beautifully iUustrated.^ - Louis UnSeyer 
m The New Era tn American Poetry. 

^"/.Can Grande's Castle ' challenges, through its vividness and contagious 
zest in life and color, an unreluctant admiration ... its rare union of vigor 
and deftness, precision and flexibility, imaginative grasp and clarity of 
detail. —Professor John Livingston Lowes in Convention and Revolt 
m roetry. 

': 'Sea-Blue and Blood-Red' and 'Guns as Keys: and the Great Gate 
swings . . . are such a widening of barriers; they bring into literature an 
element imperceptible in poetry before ... the epic of modernity concen- 
trated into thirty pages. ... Not since the Elizabethans has such a mastery 
of words been reached in English ... one had never surmised such enchant- 
rtient could have been achieved with words." — W. Bryher in The Art of 
Amy Lowell. A Critical Appreciation. London. 

" The essential element of Miss Lowell's poetrv is vividness vividness and 
a power to concentrate into a few pages the spirit of an age She iSdicates 
perfectly the slightest sense of atmosphere in a period or a city. . . Ct th| 
tK . v^-*" Pu^™' '^ °°^ the fashioning of pictures, however brilliant, of 
rvrL^^f /k '^ t t''^"^''^^-'°- °-^P- moments of history made real as this 
present through her own individuality and vision." - The London Nation. 

^C ^^^.^^^ '^o™^ to it — once Poe was the living and commanding poet 
nf f noii''^' r'^ waited for. Now we watch \nd wait for Amy Low- 
CrL^Z^ r ?i"^"'' ^"'f'^^! ^^"^ '^°'^^- • • • Each separate poem in ' Can 
.^o^- f- ^^^^'^ '^-^ real and true poem of remarkable power — a work of 
7^fS«°rm°S beautiful thing."— Joseph E. Chamberlain in 

,^nK.'S.t°k^?K^^,'^ ^^^u'V,.'^' t" ^^^ opinion of the present reviewer, not 
only the best book which Miss Lowell has so far written, but a great book 
Tn ' s;; wlV^ ^^'p?^ T^ revealing book. It deals with fundamentals. . . . 
ihnl. t^ltf/?"^^^' u'^'^-f'^ r^ ^^7f the old story of Nelson and ' mad, 
iTuMl? '*^? ^a"^^^ Hamilton' retold in a style that dazzles and excites 
Im nnon ?h!S.°"^ rr^.^''°'^ the enemy passing in procession with the 
sun upon them. — The New York Times Book Review. 



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Sword Blades and Poppy Seed 

By amy LOWELL 

Fifth edition 

OPINIONS OF LEADING REVIEWERS 

" Against the multitudinous array of daily verse our times produce this 
volume utters itself with a range and brilliancy wholly remarkable. I can- 
not see that Miss Lowell's use of unrhymed vers libre has been surpassed in 
English. Read 'The Captured Goddess,' 'Music,' and 'The Precinct. 
Rochester,' a piece of mastercraft in this kind. A wealth of subtleties and 
sympathies, gorgeously wrought, full of macabre effects (as many of the 
poems are) and brilliantly worked out. The things of splendor she has 
made she will hardly outdo in their kind." — Josephine Preston Pea- 
body, The Boston Herald. 

" For quaint pictorial exactitude and bizarrerie of color these poems re- 
mind one of Flemish masters and Dutch tulip gardens; again, they are fine 
and fantastic, like Venetian glass; and they are all curiously flooded with 
the moonlight of dreams. . . . Miss Lowell has a remarkable gift of what one 
might call the dramatic-decorative. Her decorative imagery is intensely 
dramatic, and her dramatic pictures are in themselves vivid and fantastic 
decorations." — Richard Le Gallienne, New York Times Book Review. 

" Such poems as 'A Lady,' ' Music,' ' White and Green,' are wellnigh 
uawless in their beauty — perfect ' images.' " — Harriet Monroe, Poetry. 

" Her most notable quality appears in the opening passage of the volume. 
The sharply etched tones and contours of this picture are characteristic of 
the author's work. ... In ' unrhymed cadence' Miss Lowell's cadences are 
sometimes extremely delicate, as in 'The Captured Goddess.'" — Arthur 
Davison Ficke, Chicago Dial. 



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A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass 

By amy LOWELL 

Fifth edition 

"These poems arouse interest, and Justify it by the result. Miss Lowell 
is the sister of President Lowell of Harvard. Her art, however, needs no 
reflection from such distinguished influence to make apparent its distinc- 
tion. Such verse as this is delightful, has a sort of personal flavour, a loyalty 
to the fundamentals of life and nationality. . . . The child poems are par- 
ticularly graceful." — Boston Evening Transcript, Boston, Mass. 

" Miss Lowell has given expression in exquisite form to many beautiful 
thoughts, inspired by a variety of subjects and based on some of the loft- 
iest ideals. . . . 

"The verses are grouped under the captions ' Lyrical Poems,' ' Sonnets,' 
and ' Verses for Children.' . , . 

" It is diflScult to say which of these are the most successful. Indeed, all 
reveal Miss Lowell's powers of observation from the view-point of a lover 
of nature. Moreover, Miss Lowell writes with a gentle philosophy and a 
deep knowledge of humanity 

"The sonnets are especially appealing and touch the heart strings so 
tenderly that there comes immediate response in the same spirit. . . . 

" That she knows the workings of the juvenile mind is plainly indicated 
by her verses written for their reading." — Boston Sunday Globe, Boston, 
Mass. 

" A quite delightful little collection of verses." — Toronto Globe, Toronto, 
Canada, f 

"The Lyrics are true to the old definition; they would sing well to the 
accompaniment of the strings. We should like to hear ' Hora Stellatrix ' 
rendered by an artist." — Hartford Courant, Hartford, Conn. 

"Verses that show delicate appreciation of the beautiful, and imagina- 
tive quality. A sonnet entitled ' Dreams' is peculiarly full of sympathy and 
feeling." — The Sun, Baltimore, Md. 



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Tendencies in Modern American Poetry 

By amy LOWELL 

Fourth Printing, illustrated 

" I have no hesitation in insisting that Miss Amy Lowell's ' Tendencies 
in Modern American Poetry-' is one of the most striking volumes of criticism 
that has appeared in recent years." — Clement K. Shorter in The 
Sphere, London. 

" In her recent volume, ' Tendencies in Modem American Poetry,' Miss 
Lowell employs this method (the historical) with excellent results. . . . We 
feel throughout a spirit of mingled courage, kindness, and independence 
illuminating the subject, and the result is the note of personality that is so 
priceless in criticism, yet which, unhoneyed on the one hand or uncrabbed 
on the other, is so hard to come by . . . her latest book leaves with the reader 
a strong impression of the most simple and unaffected integrity." — Helen 
BuLLis KiZER in The North American Review. 

" A new criticism has to be created to meet not only the work of the new 
artists but also the uncritical hospitality of current taste. . . . That is why a 
study such as Miss Amy Lowell's on recent tendencies in American verse is 
so significant. . . . Her very tone is revolutionary. . . . Poetry appears for 
the first time on our critical horizon ... as a sound and important activity 
of contemporary American life." — Randolph Bourne in The Dial. 

" Its real worth as criticism and its greater worth as testimony are in- 
valuable." — O. W. Firkins in The Nation. 

" The feeling she has for poetry is so genuine and catholic and instructed, 
and her acquaintance with modern activity so energetic, that she is one of 
the most interesting and illuminating persons with whom to visit the new 
poets, led by the hand." — New Republic. 



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Six French Poets 

STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 
By amy LOWELL 

TMrd edition, illustrated 

A brilliant series of biographical and critical essays dealing with Emile 
Verhaeren, Albert Samain, Remy de Gourmont, Henri de R^gnier, Francis 
Jammes, and Paul Fort, by one of the foremost living American poets. The 
translations make up an important part of the book, and together with the 
French originals constitute a representative anthology of the poetry of the 
period. 

WiLLUM Lyon Phelps, Professor of English Literature, Yale University, 
says: 

"This is, I think, the most valuable work on contemporary French liter- 
ature that I have seen for a long time. It is written by one who has a thor- 
ough knowledge of the subject and who is herself an American poet of dis- 
tinction. She has the knowledge, the sympathy, the penetration, and the 
insight — all necessary to make a notable book of criticism. It is a work 
that should be widely read in America." 

" In her ' Six French Poets' I find a stimulating quality of a high order. 
... I defy any English critic to rise from this book without the feeling that 
he has gained considerably. This is the first volume in English to contain 
a minute and careful study of these French writers." — Clement K. 
Shorter in The Sphere, London. 

" I can conceive of no greater pleasure than that of a lover of poetry who 
reads in Miss Lowell's book about modern French poetry for the first time; 
it must be Hke falling into El Dorado." — F. S. Flint, formerly French 
critic of Poetry and Drama, London, in The Little Review. 

"Amy Lowell's ' French Poets' . . . ought to be labelled like Pater's stud- 
ies 'Appreciations,' so full of charm are its penetrative interpretations . . . 
and it is not too bold to say that her introductions to and interpretations of 
French poets will live as long as interest in these poets themselves lives. 
Her book is a living and lasting piece of criticism ... a masterly volume." 
— New York Sun. 

"A very admirable piece of work." — The London Bookman. 

" Une trfes interessante etude." — La France. 

"An excellent book." — Emile Cammaerts in The Athenmum, London. 

"Miss Lowell has done a real service to literature. One must be limited, 
indeed, who fails to appreciate the power of these writers as set forth through 
the comment, the discriminating extracts, and the appended prose transla- 
tions in her book." — North American Review. 



HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

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Fir-Flower Tablets 

Poems translated from the Chinese by Florence 
Ayscough. English Versions by Amy Lowell 

"This is a real book of Chinese poetry . . . the joint production of rare 
enthusiasm and high literary gifts ... as an example of collaboration be- 
tween poet and scholar it is probably unrivalled . . . An admirable book." 
— Arthur Waley, in the New York Evening Post. 

" Miss Amy Lowell, of all modern poets, was predestined for the enter- 
prise, which in this volume she brings to such signally beautiful achieve- 
ment . . . Apart from their being faithful renderings of their originals, 
these versions are beautiful English poems as well. They have been reborn 
into English. Whatever sea-change they may have undergone into some- 
thing new and strange, they do not read like ' translations,' but have the 
magnetic vitality of original poems ... A book which, from cover to 
cover, even to the very notes, is of the purest stuflf of poetry and romance. 
Lovers of both are inexpressibly indebted to Miss Lowell and Mrs. Ays- 
cough for this gift of loveliness." — Richard Le Gaxltenne, in the New 
York Times. 

" It is hardly imaginable for an American poet who does not claim to read 
and write Chinese to make such a literal and almost exact rendering of some 
of the greatest Chinese poems . . . You are lending immortality to our 
poets in this part of the world." — Telly H. Koo, Editor-in-Chief, The 
Chinese Students' Monthly. 

" Miss Lowell has succeeded admirably in fusing her own style with that 
of the Chinese poets . . . She is especially^qualified to reproduce the delica- 
cies of oriental thought . . . There is wistfulness, passion, languor, and quiet 
humor . . . Slowly these beautiful rhythms and quaint images drug you . . . 
I know of few volumes where such a wealth of beauty can be found." — 
John Farrar, in The Bookman. 

"It shows once more Miss Lowell's remarkable ability in mastering the 
temper of an antique period. She has performed her diflScult and delicate 
task of putting these poems into English with a sensitiveness of perception 
and felicity of style that sustain her place in literature . . . 'Fir-Flower 
Tablets' proves again that true beauty is imperishable." — Norreys 
Jephson O'Conor, in the Boston Transcript. 



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*y. 



'M^\' 



